


Push & Pull

by Maayacola



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Kink, Obsession, Obsessive Behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:40:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maayacola/pseuds/Maayacola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jiyong can’t let Seungri go; not then, not now, not ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push & Pull

**Author's Note:**

> shifting timelines, dubious consent, a certain kind of sadness, and happy endings.

**PUSH**

 

“Chaerin, you need to hit that note a little more softly.” Jiyong clicks 'delete' on his macbook, because the sound byte is useless, and licks his lips. “You’re struggling too hard to hit that note.”

“Yes, sir,” Chaerin says playfully, and she flips her hair over her shoulder before she resumes a serious expression. “I don’t know why you won’t get Bom to do this part.”

“I don’t need a voice like Bom’s. It’s too strong. Maybe Dara’s would work, but it’s just… too girly.” Jiyong runs a hand through his messy purple hair and sighs. “It needs to be soft, but still sweet, and-“ He sighs and pounds his fist on the table, narrowing his eyes at his computer like it’ll have the answers.

“Are you being anal?” Chaerin asks. “Because we all know you’re anal. You don’t have to prove it to me, or anything.”

“No, I just-“ Jiyong is usually better with words. It’s just that the studio is too hot and Jiyong can’t think. Jiyong’s also been in the studio since 4am, and he’s running on two hours of sleep stolen on a dance studio sofa. He hasn’t been home in five days.

Chaerin walks out of the recording booth, slipping past the glass doors, and her heels clack against the flooring as she walks. She comes to stand beside him, leaning slightly against the table, knee brushing the arm of his chair. Her hair is shorter, Jiyong notices. She must have just cut it recently, since he saw her two days ago and it had been swinging down past her breasts. Maybe those were extensions. You never know, in this business, what anyone really looks like.

She presses her lips thin, like she wants to say something, and her lip-gloss shimmers in the fluorescent light. “Hmm.”

“What?” Jiyong asks, running his tongue over his teeth. He’s not sure when the last time he brushed them was—it’s been an intense week, and Jiyong is running too close to the deadline. In six days it’ll be over, and Jiyong can sleep the sleep of the dead; turn off his mobile for twenty-four hours and pretend the rest of world doesn’t exist. After that, of course, he’ll be getting ready frantically to promote the album. But that twenty-four hours of nothing but the back of his eyelids will be glorious. “If you’ve got something to say, you should say it. My schedule is tight.”

“It sounds like you need-“ She stops, and seems to think better of whatever she was about to say. She licks her lips. “Let me go back in the booth and try again.”

“Sounds like I need _what_?” Jiyong hates it when people start sentences and don’t finish them. Then he has to waste his time clarifying when he could have dismissed the subject already. And it’s not like he can ignore it; Jiyong is obsessive, about everything, and he’ll sit and think about that unfinished sentence for hours after Chaerin has already left if she doesn’t finish it now. “Don’t start things you don’t intend to finish.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything at all. You’re so fussy. Let’s just move on.”

“You know better.” Jiyong’s shirt is sticking to his back. It’s disgusting. He needs a shower. He doesn’t have time for this.

“Oppa, let it go,” Chaerin says, and the way she says it, it’s like she’s still the teenager he recorded with for the first time, just sassy enough to let Jiyong know she would be great. Now she’s twenty-five, and half the time she thinks she already knows it all. She doesn’t, but neither does Jiyong, so he doesn’t call her on it.

Jiyong picks up his hat off the table and pulls it down over his ears to stop himself from messing with his hair. It’s greasy and disgusting and it makes Jiyong depressed to touch it.

“You might as well just tell me, or we’ll be sitting here all day.” Jiyong taps his feet against the ground impatiently, his Adidas making squeaking sounds as he kicks at the laminate. “And you _know_ I don’t have all day.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a total pain in the butt?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “Usually at that point, I helpfully remind them that it’s my job to be a pain in the butt, and who is rolling in royalties right now?”

“Control freak.”

“Smart-ass.”

She sighs. “It’s sounds like you need Seungri,” Chaerin says. “Seungri’s voice seems like it would be exactly what you’re looking for.” She examines her nails as she speaks. They’re painted in a cheetah print or something, but she’s been wearing the same design this whole promotion cycle so Jiyong knows she’s not so much looking at her nails as she is looking away from him. “Seungri’s voice would be perfect for this song.”

Jiyong’s throat is dry. He takes a sip of flavored water, from the same bottle he’s been nursing for the past four hours, because he hasn’t had breakfast and he needs to fill his stomach with something, and as he does, Chaerin’s gaze flickers up to catch his for just a moment, before she finds something else to look at.

“Oh,” Jiyong says, and then he chuckles. “That’s not going to happen.”

“It doesn’t sound right with my voice,” Chaerin says. “This is YG family. You’re supposed to ask another YG artist to be in your song, oppa. No one else in the company fits the bill.”

“Seungri isn’t just another artist,” Jiyong says, and he tugs his pink knit cap down so the eyes embroidered on the fold can look out at the world instead of him. “Plus, he wouldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know why you think-“

“He wouldn’t do it,” Jiyong says, and there’s ice in his voice that makes Chaerin snap her mouth shut. “Especially not for me.” Jiyong closes his eyes for a second, and inhales. “I mean, he would if he was forced to. But I’m not going to force him to.”

Chaerin looks like she wants to ask more questions, or demand answers that Jiyong doesn’t want to give, but instead she takes a sip of her own water. Jiyong realizes, all of a sudden, that he’s leaning forward, half out of his seat with his hands gripped too tight on his thighs. He consciously relaxes, loosening his grip on his legs, and crossing one over the other. There’s uneven hair, he notices, around his knees. He shouldn’t be wearing shorts until he has a chance to get waxed. Before promotions start. There will be time for that later, after sleep.

“Okay,” Chaerin says, and when Jiyong opens his eyes again, she’s looking down at the lyrics.

It’s a breakup song. Jiyong’s been writing a lot of those lately. Art imitates life, Jiyong supposes.

“Besides,” Jiyong adds. “It can’t be Seungri’s voice missing from a song that _I’ve_ written.” It’s too hot for a hat, really, but Jiyong’s hair is too short for a ponytail and too long to stay out of his eyes today. A headband would have been better. “After all, I’ve never known what to do with Seungri’s voice.”

That’s what the fans say. In a lot of ways, they’re right. In some ways they’re wrong, too, but Jiyong’s not going to call them all up and explain the situation to them. He’s not going to call Seungri up and explain it to him, either. Seungri wouldn’t answer the phone, anyway.

Jiyong’s made sure of that in so many ways.

Chaerin opens her mouth to speak, but the door cracks, and Youngbae peeks his head around it. He immediately reads the atmosphere, and Jiyong can see the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure out what sort of thing he’s interrupting. Jiyong raises an eyebrow at him, but realizes it’s useless because his hat is pulled so low on his face that Youngbae can probably barely see his eyes.

“Everything all right?” Youngbae asks, his baseball cap turned sideways. “I’m going to take the fact that Jiyong isn’t laughing hysterically to himself and shouting as a good sign…”

“I’m recording the hook for Jiyong-oppa’s song, but my voice is all wrong for it,” Chaerin says carefully. “I think he’s looking for something softer. I don’t want him to pull a Bom on me.”

“A Bom?” Youngbae asks, and Jiyong swallows, licking his lips. He pushes his hat back out of his eyes.

“She means she doesn’t want to record the same line eighty times and then, in the end, have it be replaced it with my voice.” Jiyong smirks, a little, because it did end up seeming a little ridiculous, when he saw the clip of it on 2NE1 TV. But Jiyong is serious about songwriting, and serious about every song sounding as good in real life as it sounds in his head. Teddy is the same way, and it’s why they make a good team.

“Oh,” Youngbae says, and he stretches his arms above his head. “Then why don’t you just get another singer, Jiyong?”

Jiyong frowns at Youngbae, blinking at him slowly, and Youngbae grimaces.

“Sorry, that’s probably what you guys were discussing, right?”

“Yes,” Chaerin says. “But Jiyong-oppa is being particularly stubborn.”

“Stubborn? _Jiyong_? Really?” Youngbae smiles, in that way that hasn’t changed since they were sixth graders, and his eyes turn into crescents. It’s nice, Jiyong thinks, that some things never change, considering that over the past three years, everything else has. “Are we talking about the same man? My friend Jiyong? Why, I thought he was the king of compromise.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jiyong says, and he begins clicking the remains of his nails against the tabletop again, unable to hold in his nervous energy, even as Chaerin laughs and Youngbae tugs on the brim of his hat, pleased with the broken tension. He wants to be working on this song right now. Jiyong likes working on songs. It makes perfect sense, all the time. Songs are like puzzles, and Jiyong has all the pieces; he just has to put them in the right places.

It’s not like doing presscons or variety shows. Jiyong’s not in charge of any of that, and he’s only one of the puzzle pieces. It’s not his thing. That whole ‘not being in control’ thing.

“So what kind of voice are you looking for? I’m free,” Youngbae says. “At least for the next two hours. I was actually coming to ask if you wanted to get lunch.”

“This isn’t the time to discuss _lunch_ ,” Jiyong says heatedly, because he’s _tired_ , and every second they spend talking is a second longer Jiyong is not working. “Who has time for lunch?”

“Not you, I’m guessing,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong bites back his sarcastic response.

“He wants something light, and sweet. I suggested Dara, but he said that wasn’t right either, so I suggested Seungri-“ Chaerin puts her hands on her hips, and sighs like she’s talking about something Minzy’s dog Dougie has done, and not a grown man who is her senior.

“Ah,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong can hear the frown in his voice, and feel the air being sucked out of the room. Jiyong chances a look at Youngbae, but Youngbae isn’t looking back at him.

Seungri is… well, the only time Youngbae has ever been disappointed in him. The only time Youngbae has looked at him as less. Jiyong hates that feeling, and the way is weighs in the pit of his stomach like lead. Youngbae has always been Jiyong’s best friend. His teammate. Jiyong hates letting him down, though he pretends he doesn’t care.

Jiyong wonders, sometimes, if Youngbae knows what happened, between himself and Seungri. Jiyong thinks he does, at least a little, because sometimes he’ll pat Jiyong’s arm sympathetically when there’s yet another ‘What happened to BIGBANG?’ special on television, or change the subject when Jiyong accidentally mentions Seungri’s name when he’s telling a story and then loses track of his thoughts, remembering the way Seungri used to belong so completely in his life, and the way he’s not there at all anymore.

But whether Youngbae knows what happened or not, in the end, Seungri won’t come to record a song with Jiyong, and Jiyong is totally fine with that because it means he and Seungri don’t have to see each other quite yet.

He knows they will soon, when the band reunites at the beginning of next year for an album, but until then, Jiyong assumes they’re both relieved at the distance.

“Well, that’s a little complicated,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong realizes there’s been a long silence. “Anyway, Jiyong probably wants to work with people who aren’t in BIGBANG. He sings with us all the time!”

“That’s true,” Chaerin says, and Jiyong ignores the lilt of curiosity in her tone. It’s none of her business, anyway. “But it’s sort of the ‘YG way’, isn’t it?”

“Not Seungri,” Jiyong says, and to his surprise, his voice stumbles a little. He feels a little like he’s choking. “I can’t work with Seungri.”

“You’re in the same band,” Chaerin says incredulously. “You guys are supposed to come back next year.” She shrugs. “I thought you’d be over whatever random fight you had, before. It’s not like you could keep fighting while he did two years in the military.”

It’s been two years since Jiyong’s said anything to Seungri. It’s been two years since he’d looked him in the eye. Seungri’s been gone, and Jiyong’s tried to forget.

Jiyong isn’t over it, and neither is Seungri, he’s sure.

It’s too hot in here, in this studio, and Jiyong might be slowly going insane. It’s fine; Jiyong does his best work when he’s way past his limit, running on absolute empty. Hell, Jiyong wrote Fantastic Baby after five days without sleeping or eating, surviving on convenience store potato chips while TOP-hyung slept on the sofa of the recording studio and Youngbae and Kush valiantly tried to supply him with enough coffee and cigarettes that he wouldn’t collapse.

It’s become one of the top 20 downloaded ringtones in Korea of all time, and it’s only been four years. Yang Hyun Suk still ‘jokes’ that sleep deprivation looks good on him, but Jiyong’s getting grey hair, and that doesn’t look good on anyone.

“Worry about your own band,” Jiyong snaps, and Chaerin snorts, moving away from Jiyong and walking past Youngbae. Youngbae narrows his eyes a bit at Jiyong, like he’s debating whether or not Jiyong wants comfort or to be left alone.

Jiyong wants to be left alone. Youngbae’s always been good at reading him, and he figures it out. “Chaerin, you up for lunch upstairs?”

“Sure,” she says, and Chaerin looks at Jiyong. Jiyong’s hair is sticking with sweat to the back of his neck under his hat, and it’s annoying. Everything is annoying. “Unless you need me?”

“I’ll do something else,” Jiyong says, and he links his hands together and leans forward in his seat. “It’s fine.”

“I really think-“ Chaerin stops again, but this time, Jiyong doesn’t ask her to finish, because he already knows what she’s going to say.

Jiyong anxiously twists his wedding ring around and around on his finger, and like always, it seems to burn his skin.

Jiyong’s wife is in Japan right now. He doesn’t know when, or if, she’s coming back.

He’s also not sure if he cares.

“I’ll figure something out,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae tilts his cap again, fidgeting (or maybe dancing) in place, offering Chaerin a gentle grin.

“Let’s go then,” Youngbae said, and he moves toward the door, and Chaerin follows.

It’s always been the carrot and the whip, and Jiyong supposes Youngbae is destined to soften his blows, inside or outside the band.

Chaerin leaves, and Youngbae lingers in the doorway for a moment too long to be coincidence.

“Maybe you should consider it,” Youngbae says quietly. “We all have to work together soon, you know?”

“Go away and let me think,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae does. When he’s alone, Jiyong leans forward and rests his forehead on the table, letting the tension ease out of his body. He can hear his phone vibrating, and he ignores it. He doesn’t really have time to talk, and if anyone wants to find him for work reasons, they know where he is. He’s reserved this studio for the next five days.

He grabs the lyrics sheet and stares at it, the words he’s written blurring in front of his eyes.

Seungri’s voice.

It’s a song about letting go. Perhaps this song was meant for Jiyong and Seungri after all.

Still, Jiyong’s not going to ask him. He’ll have Dara do the song, maybe, and pretend, to himself, that her voice is what he’d intended all along, and no one but Jiyong will know the difference.

Jiyong growls, and throws the lyrics sheet across the room.

He’ll work on a different song today, then.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

When Jiyong was eleven years old, he decided his entire future over the course of a single meal.

It was his first meeting with Yang Hyun Suk, and Jiyong was intimidated and nervous and unsure. His mother left the room, and Yang Hyun Suk looked down at him with heavy eyes. “You belong with YG,” he said, and Jiyong had looked up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Really?” Jiyong had asked, because he was too fucking young and everything seemed to be moving so fast. Jiyong had done bit parts on kid shows and commercials, and he’d been let go from two record companies already; not pretty enough to be in SM and not really wanted elsewhere, and that was all so very different from this, where Jiyong was the one being chased. Jiyong had told his mother he didn’t want to be a singer anymore, but he’d never seen a dotted line that looked so inviting.

“Yes,” President Yang had said. “Do whatever you have to do to make her let you sign. Cry, beg, whine. But you belong at YG. You belong with me.”

At the end of the meal, he signed the contract, and the world shifted.

Jiyong can’t specifically pinpoint the changes in himself since then. There have been so many that Jiyong has lost count; lost sight of them all. All he knows is that he’s irrevocably lost the innocence that had him looking into Yang Hyun Suk’s serious eyes and wanting more than anything to sign his life away.

He’s lost that, and it’s made him ugly.

Sometimes, Jiyong thinks he is too ugly to be seen. Not on the outside, where he’s learned just how to line his eyes and paint his face to maximize the sort of androgyny that sells, but on the inside. He looks in the mirror and sees the reflections of all his worst thoughts in his eyes and it makes him want to break the glass.

Jiyong lives all alone in a castle made of platinum selling records that have his heart spilled all over them, and sometimes, he looks down from his tower and wonders if all the happiness is out there.

At this point, Jiyong’s not even sure he’d recognize happiness if he saw it. Jiyong often thinks he might just be too arrogant to admit that he isn’t happy now.

There was a time when Jiyong had been made of hopes and dreams and work ethic and ambition. Now Jiyong is made of loneliness and words he has to say, and a future that’s as empty as his past.

He used to dream about lots of things, in vivid color and music notes and ideas, but now Jiyong slumbers in monochrome, like cigarette ash across his imagination.

Jiyong will go home tonight, to the same comforter he’s had for years and years, freshly unpacked from storage where he’d kept it, and let Tom and Laura lie on either side of him, and Jiyong will be alone.

He’d like to blame fame, or maybe everyone else in the world for misunderstanding him, or maybe he should blame the music industry or everything else that’s shaped his path through life.

But the truth is, Jiyong has no one to blame but himself, because Jiyong is a monster, and he can try and try to hide it behind smiles and jokes, but eventually everyone sees that inside he’s nothing but teeth and claws and wretched misery, and they leave.

There has been no witch’s spell; just Jiyong’s ambition and arrogance and selfishness all combined to make him a Beast.

There was a time when Jiyong had felt almost happy, but Jiyong had ruined that the same way he ruins everything else he touches, because Jiyong tests and tests people, but his tests are always unfair.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“How’s progress on the album going?” Yang Hyun Suk leans forward in his seat, hands folded together on his desk. Teddy is sitting next to Jiyong, reclining back in his chair and watching the conversation quietly.

“I’ve got one song left,” Jiyong says. “I haven’t picked a vocalist.”

“Which one?”

“ _Shut the Door_.”

“I thought you were using CL,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong can’t see his eyes underneath the brim of his cap. Still, he can see the downturned edges of his lips. “You’re not?”

“No,” Jiyong says. “Her voice doesn’t sound right.”

“Let us listen,” he says, and Jiyong pulls out his netbook and queues the unfinished song.

When it’s done playing, Yang Hyun Suk licks his lips, frog-like, and Teddy makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat.

“Have you considered Seungri?” Teddy asks, and Jiyong holds back his immediate response of ‘no’, and tilts his head in askance.

“I agree,” Yang Hyun Suk says, steepling his fingers and scribbling notes into the notepad he keeps by his desk. “Seungri’s sweet voice would be perfect.”

“It’s a part written for a woman,” Jiyong says, but it feels like a feeble excuse to his own ears, so it must sound even worse to the two others.

Teddy shifts in his seat, and his hood falls down. He quickly pulls it back up, adjusting it around the baseball cap as he looks over at Jiyong. “You know that doesn’t really matter.” Teddy taps his hands on his knees. “The fans would eat that up.”

Jiyong knows that.

“Yeah,” Jiyong says.

“Whatever is going on with you and Seungri, fix it.” Yang Hyun Suk’s voice is hard like steel, and Jiyong winces, because that voice hasn’t been used on him since the time he’d told Yang Hyun Suk he was going to get married. “BIGBANG will come back in six months. We will promote the album, and then the rest of you will follow in Seungri and Seunghyun’s footsteps and do your military service. I won’t have two of the members refusing to talk to each other. Your fans must remember you positively.”

“Yes, sir,” Jiyong says, and he looks down at his lap, twisting his wedding band around, and around, and around. “Of course, sir.” He’s possibly never felt this uncomfortable, except maybe when he and Daesung went on 'Healing Camp' to talk about their scandals in 2012, and he'd had to watch Daesung try to keep from crying on national television. Jiyong had felt, then, like he was in a shark tank and bleeding from the gut. It’s like that now, too, except Jiyong knows these sharks; they aren’t faceless, nameless people who want to watch him fail, but people he knows want him to succeed. That makes the pressure higher, because disappointing people is not something Jiyong is used to doing professionally, even if it’s a trademark of his personal life.

“Good,” Yang Hyun Suk says. “I want a finished album by tomorrow. Are the concepts finished? Cover designs?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “I sent back my final choices last night or this morning… It’s all blurring together.”

“Have them forwarded to me within the next hour,” is the reply, and Jiyong nods.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and he twirls a piece of his light purple hair around his finger. It’s long. His fans won’t be surprised that his hair is wild, but hopefully they’ll be surprised by what he’s done.

Jiyong will just focus on everything but this last song and he’ll get through today.

“I will call Seungri,” Teddy says. “Tell him we need his voice for Jiyong’s album.”

“Thank you,” Jiyong manages, and his chest is tight. “I’m going to head back to the studio and keep mixing.”

“Right,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong stands, and bows at the waist, low the way he’s known for, and exits, Teddy at his heels.

“I’m sorry,” Teddy says, when they’re both waiting for the elevator. “If I thought any other voice would be as good of a fit, I would have suggested that instead.”

“It’s about the music,” Jiyong says firmly. “It’s always been about the music. This is what I have to do.”

“Maybe you guys can bury whatever hatchet there is between you,” Teddy says optimistically. “I know it would set Youngbae’s mind at ease.”

“Maybe,” Jiyong says, but he’s not sure Seungri will ever forgive him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to look at Seungri and not want to take.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

The first time Jiyong meets Seungri, the younger boy doesn’t meet his eyes. He stares at the ground as Yang Hyun Suk tells them Lee Seunghyun is going to be joining them from now on, as a fellow trainee. It’s just Jiyong and Youngbae in the room, and they’re already sticky from the heat and from dance instruction.

Jiyong’s still put-out that he and Youngbae aren’t going to be debuting as a duo, as GDYB, like they’d both thought they’d be doing since… well, since forever. Jiyong doesn’t have time for little kids who can’t even look him in the face when he’s talking to them, so Jiyong definitely doesn’t have time for this tiny Seunghyun, with his messy hair and puffy eyes.

“What are you good at?” Jiyong says gruffly, when they’re left alone. Youngbae elbows him, silently telling him to curb his tone, and Jiyong ignores him, fixing his gaze on the newcomer, whose hands are fisted in the material of his sweatshirt, and is quickly developing a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Dancing,” Seunghyun says, and his voice cracks, because he’s still a kid.

Jiyong’s never been a kid. Jiyong’s been an adult since he was ten, and he’d never stand there tugging at the string of his hood, because he’s never felt that lost.

“Dancing, eh? Are you actually good?”

Seunghyun finally looks up, and Jiyong gets a good view of his face for the first time. He’s got a perfect bow to his upper lip, and there’s puppy fat on his cheeks that makes him look impossibly young. Jiyong’s got it too, but Jiyong’s got a hard look in his eyes that ensures that no one ever actually treats him like a child. This kid looks soft, like Jiyong could break him as easily with a cross word as with a punch.

“I heard, from President Yang, that you’re good at everything,” Seunghyun says, and he talks funny, quick releasing on words and truncating his vowels in a way that makes him sound nasal and country. But his eyes, Jiyong notices, sparkle, and he’s looking at Jiyong like Jiyong is… special. Like Jiyong is important. It gives Jiyong a warm feeling in his chest, because Jiyong sometimes feels like he’s been waiting his whole life to have someone look at him just like that.

“No,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae snorts, and this new Seunghyun, this little Seunghyun, offers a tentative smile. “But you’ll listen to me, because I'm better at everything than you are.”

“Yes, of course,” he says, and Jiyong feels a tingle, right where his heart is, at the way this boy looks so eager to please.

And maybe Jiyong has time for this new kid, after all.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

The concept for the album is ‘Greed’. It’s something Jiyong is intimately familiar with, even if Jiyong has not always been honest with himself about it.

Jiyong is greedy about praise. He’s absolutely avaricious about seeing his name in the newspaper with producer and lyricist written beside it. He loves when people hate him and still can’t help but buy his music, because it’s just that good. He loves it when the music critics talk about what a genius he is, because Jiyong loves to be told how good he is, over and over and over again.

Jiyong is greedy about admiration, too. He likes it when his juniors look at him with stars in their eyes and tell him they want to be just like him when they grow up. Jiyong likes putting his hand on their shoulders and telling them if they practice hard, they will succeed, and watching them nod with the same enthusiasm he’d loved in Seungri, back when Seungri was still eager and hungry for love-crumbs. Jiyong loves that he’s an ideal, and it eggs him on, the desire to be deserving of that admiration.

So he makes his album cover designs in different shades of green, darks and lights, and paints his mouth in green lipstick and uses a green apple to link his themes, and tells the world just how greedy he is, because Jiyong’s brand of sharp and hideous truth has always sold.

Green, Jiyong knows, is also the color of envy, and Jiyong knows what that feels like too, whenever he sees Sean and his wife curled up together on a sofa looking like they could spend forever just looking at each other. But Jiyong doesn’t have time for that kind of regret.

Jiyong thanks his wife and his YG Family in the liner notes, and doesn’t write what he really wants to write, which is that more than anything, his greatest greed is for the happiness that’s eluded him. He doesn’t write anything about Lee Seunghyun, either, even if half of these songs were written about him.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“Are you doing well?” Jiyong’s wife asks, and Jiyong can barely hear her through the static. She’s in Japan, doing a shoot for NYLON. She sounds happy.

“The album’s coming along,” Jiyong replies, because he’s not exactly doing well, and Jiyong’s never bothered to lie to her.

“I’m not coming back, Jiyong,” she says, after a moment, and Jiyong looks down at his hands and wonders what his ring finger will look like bare; he’s forgotten. He’ll probably have a tan line there, and everyone will stare. That’s fine; Jiyong is used to the staring.

He wonders what the news will have to say about his divorce. He’s not sure he cares, as long as it doesn’t affect his album sales.

“I didn’t think you were,” Jiyong says honestly. “I don’t have time right now to deal with lawyers.”

“It can wait,” she says calmly. “Until later. When you have time to breathe.”

“Are you happy?” Jiyong asks her, and she exhales, and Jiyong can hear the smile in it. He thinks about the locket she’s always worn around her neck, and he closes his eyes. His sweatpants are sticking to his thighs. It’s a hot July. Tomorrow it will be August. Jiyong should wash these sweatpants before he wears them again.

“Yes,” she says, after a long pause, and Jiyong swallows the spit that’s somehow gathered in his mouth. He’s so damn tired he can barely think.

“I’m jealous,” Jiyong says, and she laughs, and it’s husky and deep and sexy, and Jiyong has always liked her so much.

“I want you to be happy too,” she says, and Jiyong’s nails, he realizes, are digging painfully into his palms, maybe hard enough to break the skin.

“I don’t know how to be happy,” Jiyong says, and Jiyong hates when things are out of his control. “I only know how to be selfish.”

“Don’t you think it’s about time you start learning?”

Two days until deadline.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Jiyong decides, one day, out of the blue, that he likes Seungri more than he’s ever liked anyone.

It’s not that Seungri isn’t annoying, because he is. His laugh is too obnoxious, and he’s always talking, demanding the spotlight without remorse or dignity with his loud, whiny voice and even louder stories; anecdotes they all would rather he didn’t share, and jokes that are weird and sometimes fall completely, embarrassingly flat. Sometimes Jiyong wants to press his fingers over Seungri’s mouth just to keep him from talking.

And then sometimes, Seungri can’t take what he dishes out, and goes eerily quiet when Jiyong fires back, showing his mortification with silences and effusive blushes.

It’s just that Seungri is so honest. Jiyong knows everything Seungri is thinking, all the time, because it’s written in his eyes and in the set of his mouth and in the way he grasps at Jiyong’s t-shirt at night, when Jiyong hears him crying in his room and goes in to investigate, letting Seungri press his wet face to Jiyong’s neck and remembering not to taunt him about it in the morning. He can see Seungri’s heart whenever he looks at him, and Jiyong likes knowing what Seungri’s thinking.

Jiyong likes seeing admiration and affection thick and heavy in that hopeful gaze, and Jiyong likes seeing hurt there too, when he carefully cuts him with his words, because Jiyong likes knowing that his words have that power over Seungri.

Seungri is the perfect friend for Jiyong, because Jiyong can reveal all the terrible, cruel sides of himself, and Seungri just takes it and comes back for more, because Jiyong means so much to him.

“Hyung,” Seungri says, with eager hands and eager eyes and a need to please that calls to Jiyong deep inside. “Hyung, did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Jiyong says, and he wraps his hand a little too tight around Seungri’s upper arm and tugs him near, catching him in a one-armed hug that Seungri will half-heartedly try and worm his way out of if there are cameras near. “Of course not, maknae.” He’ll whisper it in Seungri’s ear, and Seungri will giggle and blush, and it’s all perfect, just like that.

Jiyong doesn’t want Seungri to grow up and grow away. Jiyong doesn’t want Seungri to leave him.

Jiyong likes Seungri more than he’s ever liked anyone, but something about Seungri brings out the worst in him, because Jiyong doesn’t want to share; not with Seunghyun, not with Youngbae, not with Daesung, not with anyone. Seungri is good at making friends, and Jiyong hates it. Hates the way Seungri isn’t all his, all the time.

There’s a sickness in it, the way Jiyong wants to break every arm that slips around Seungri’s shoulders, and put Seungri’s laugh in a glass jar so only he can listen to it. There’s a sickness in it, and Jiyong knows that, but he can’t really help it.

Jiyong likes Seungri more than he likes anyone, and it might drive him insane.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

It’s been four years since Jiyong’s last solo album. It should have been two, but then Jiyong had gone and gotten married, and the media had been a circus, and Jiyong hadn’t put out an album. Jiyong hadn’t even wanted to write the songs for an album.

“Normally weddings are happy things,” Jiyong’s older sister told him, and Jiyong laughed a little hollowly. He hoped it sounded more natural on the other end of the phone line.

“When you’re famous, sometimes they’re a career death sentence.”

“Then why’d you do it?” She’d asked, and Jiyong had taken a deep breath.

“It’s hard to explain,” Jiyong had said, and his sister had chuckled.

“Everything about you is excessively complicated,” she replied. “Just try your best.”

“Have you ever wanted something so bad you couldn’t do anything but think about it? Like, you sometimes feel like you want it so much you’re crawling out of your actual skin, reaching as far as you can but it’ll never be far enough?”

“I think we’ve all wanted something in life, Jiyong. If that’s how you feel about your wife-“

“No,” Jiyong said, and his hand held on to the phone too tight. “Getting married is my way of making it impossible for me to ever have what I want.” Jiyong looks down at the floor. “Maybe if it’s impossible, I’ll stop wanting it.”

Seungri’s skin had tasted like ambrosia, and Jiyong had felt like a god feasting upon it.

“Life doesn’t work like that,” Dami said, and Jiyong refused to believe her.

Instead, Jiyong had hid in his newly bought home and declined to answer anyone’s calls until Daesung had showed up at his door unexpectedly, and his wife had let him in, raising a sardonic eyebrow when Jiyong had looked at her accusingly.

“You’re being melodramatic,” Daesung had said, and Jiyong had licked his lips and tightened his hands around his water cup, and looked up at his friend. “It’ll get better.”

“Will it?”

“It will,” Daesung said. “Trust me. It’s not like you killed someone.” Daesung said it with a smile, but there was something terrible lurking underneath the words, and Jiyong felt so stupid.

“Why do you act so much older than me? Are you the hyung?”

“Because you’ve always thought you were an adult,” Daesung said, and Jiyong remembers slipping his glasses down the bridge of his nose to look at Daesung over the top edge of them.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you never thought to yourself ‘I have to grow up.’ You thought you were already there.”

“So I’m still a child?” Jiyong asked, and Daesung had shrugged, and as usual, his face had been unreadable.

“It means in a lot of ways, you still act like a child.” Daesung sighed and leaned forward, and Jiyong can see the weariness in his shoulders. “We all knew the consequences of you getting married… all of us except for you, apparently.”

“Except for me.” Jiyong swallowed, and he can recall the way Daesung’s words had seemed so novel and new, at the time.

“Youngbae wanted to come see you last week, but he’s in crunch time for _his_ album, since President Yang is pushing the release date up to fill the gap created by yours.”

“Right. And TOP-hyung is filming, of course.” Jiyong took his glasses off, and folded them up in his hand. “And Seungri?”

Daesung tilted his head to the side and looked straight on at Jiyong, and Jiyong thought, briefly, that Daesung looked kind of angry.

“Seungri refuses to talk about you,” Daesung said. “He’s being a child, too.” Daesung scratches his neck. “Seungri’s going into the army in three weeks.”

“What?” Jiyong asks, and then he rests his face in his hands as the word solidify into a truth in his head. “I’ve messed up, Daesung.”

Daesung looks at him. “Then how are you going to fix it?”

“I don’t know,” Jiyong had said, and he’d buried both hands in his hair. He had wanted to scream.

“You can’t do it sitting in here feeling sorry for yourself.” That’s what Jiyong had said to Daesung, two and a half years ago. It’s almost funny to hear the same words coming out of Daesung’s mouth.

“Maybe you should be leader,” Jiyong jokes, and his voice sounds a little thick.

“No,” Daesung had said, patting Jiyong on the back. “I think you’ve had it under control.” Daesung coughs into his hand, and smiles. “So pull yourself back together.”

Jiyong had been thankful.

And now time has passed, and things have calmed down, and the time has been crammed with BIGBANG members releasing solo albums… Youngbae’s had been followed by Daesung’s long awaited one, and Jiyong had filled his time writing music for Daesung, and for his own solo album.

And now G-Dragon is making a comeback, and Jiyong isn’t nervous. Mostly just excited, because making music has never been work for him. Sometimes it’s been painful and stressful, and Jiyong felt like ripping himself or his band members limb from limb, but it’s always been his passion to create.

And now he’s one song away from a long-anticipated finish line, and Jiyong’s got an obstacle in front of him he doesn’t know how to cross.

His phone rings.

“Hello?” he says quickly, and Teddy coughs over the line.

“Yo,” Teddy says. “Seungri will be over in about four hours. Make sure you’re ready for him.”

“He agreed to come?” Jiyong blurts out, then seals his mouth closed.

“He seemed surprised that you wanted him,” Teddy says. “Probably because you were always so uncertain with his voice."

“I wasn’t,” Jiyong says. “It’s just Seungri’s voice is so…” Jiyong lets the sentence drag off, and Teddy isn’t like Jiyong, and he doesn’t pry.

“Well, four hours. The song’s got to be finished tonight. I’ll be by to listen to it later, cool? I’m going to work with Minzy tonight on a new dance track, but after that I’ll be by.”

“Great,” Jiyong says. “And thanks.”

“Good luck,” Teddy says. “Play nice.”

“I always play nice.”

“You’re a dick,” Teddy says, laughing. “But Seungri already know that.” Jiyong picks at his nails as they talk, and the cuticles are raw where he’s worn them down. “Jiyong… You gotta fix it, man.”

“I know,” Jiyong says, and he thinks a little bit of his urgency slips into his voice because Teddy sighs loudly in his ear. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“Yeah,” Teddy says. “Like I said: good luck.”

“Thanks,” Jiyong says, and then he starts to wait.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

In the beginning, Seungri is almost shy. Not shy about his wants or needs… more that he’s afraid of being rejected and does anything he can to prevent that. He puts on an act that no one but Jiyong seems to see through, and pretends to be bold and confident and strong, and the audience laps it up, and Jiyong feels like no one is looking hard enough.

Seungri’s only the soft boy that had first won Jiyong over in the late night. Jiyong has his own room, but he doesn’t often sleep there. Seungri pretends to be bright and untouchable during the day, shrugging off Jiyong’s playful touches and grinning for the camera. But when the day ends, and it’s just Seungri, alone in his bed, that’s when the fear and the insecurities set in, and Jiyong takes it upon himself to be there when that happens, and soothe Seungri’s hair back from his face and calm his gentle sobs with a steady palm against Seungri’s warm back.

Seungri usually falls asleep to Jiyong’s whispered reassurances, and Jiyong loves the way Seungri’s hands are tangled up in his t-shirt, and the way Seungri looks settled into the curve of his side. Jiyong loves the way Seungri is like a puppy, warm and noisy and clumsy in his sleep.

Jiyong always pulls Seungri in tight, and as he does, he starts to wonder when Seungri became someone Jiyong would sacrifice sleep for. When Seungri, lying just like this, became something precious.

Jiyong wants to wrap Seungri in the circle of his arms, and for the first time, he thinks to himself that he never wants to let Seungri go. That he’d like to keep Seungri forever in his embrace, and never share this side of Seungri with anyone else.

When Seungri wakes up in the morning, he always stretches out, pressing into Jiyong with kicking legs and wayward elbows, and waking him up too. Then he always, _always_ curls back up, fitting into the space Jiyong has created for him with his body, like a nest.

“It’s time to get up?” Jiyong cracks, before he swallows and repeats the question.

“Yes,” Seungri says. “Bu I don’t want to get up.”

“Why not?” Jiyong asks, because Seungri usually doesn’t have trouble waking up; not like Jiyong who could probably sleep through nuclear war.

“It’s safer in here,” Seungri whispers. “I feel safe.”

“In your room?” Jiyong laughs a little, because maknae is silly.

“In your arms,” Seungri replies, and his face is beet red and he’s staring at anything but Jiyong, eyebrows knitted together.

“Don’t be stupid,” Jiyong says, but he likes it.

“Sorry,” Seungri mumbles, and his flush grows deeper, to this satisfying color that makes Jiyong want Seungri to stay right where he is so Jiyong can devour him with delighted eyes.

And maybe Seungri, Jiyong thinks, wouldn’t mind, so much, being Jiyong’s, and Jiyong likes that most of all.

“You’re special, maknae,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s mouth parts slightly. He looks like a doll.

The look in his eyes is one that Jiyong doesn’t understand, but he sees the admiration mixed into it, and it’s good enough. “Really?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and he drags his fingertips across Seungri’s adam’s apple, and wishes his fingers would leave a mark.

“Don’t break him,” Yang Hyun Suk says to Jiyong one day, when they’re standing next to each other, watching Seungri do the choreography alone. “Don’t you dare.”

 

 

**STRUGGLE WITH THE KNOT**

 

 

“Hi,” Seungri says, and Jiyong looks up from his computer to stare at the man in the doorway.

Seungri looks lean, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wearing a tight gray t-shirt that shows off muscles Jiyong’s never seen him with before.

“Hi,” Jiyong says back, and it’s just the two of them, alone, for the first time in two years. The last time they were alone together, Seungri had bit his own lip hard enough to bleed and Jiyong had still wanted to lick it off.

“You look…” Seungri trails off, and his hair is growing back, Jiyong can see, from the standard military buzz-cut. “Different.”

“I haven’t slept in a week. I probably look like roadkill.” Jiyong purses his lips, and fights the urge to bite his nails. He could really use a cigarette, but Jiyong doesn’t allow himself to smoke when he might have to record, because it fogs up his voice and tightens his vocal chords. He’s heard it works differently for others, but Jiyong knows his own body.

Right now, he’s nervous. It’s not something Jiyong feels all that often, but Seungri, his maknae, is standing in front of him for the first time in two fucking years and Jiyong has no idea what to say.

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Seungri says, and his speaking voice is the same, still too high and still stopping and starting as he lingers too long on consonants. Jiyong had missed it. “But you do look tired.”

“I need you,” Jiyong says, and then he realizes how it sounds. He twists his wedding ring around on his finger, and Seungri’s eyes gravitate down. His mouth tightens as he looks at the ring, and he swallows. Jiyong watches him. “For my song.”

“Teddy told me,” Seungri says, and he clenches his jaw. Jiyong can see the muscle tighten there, and he wants to smooth that tenseness away with his thumb, slow and steady until Seungri melts into his side and tells him everything that’s ever bothered him and bristles as Jiyong laughs at him. Years ago, he could have.

Now, all he can do is drink in Seungri’s presence, let it soak into him and refresh him. Jiyong suddenly feels wide-awake. “Only your voice can do this,” Jiyong says.

“Let me see the song, hyung,” Seungri says, and he barely remembers to add the honorific, because some things never change. “What’s the mood?”

Jiyong hands him the sheet, and Seungri moves closer, walking over to Jiyong, and he takes it, careful not to let their hands touch. Jiyong can feel the heat of him now.

“It’s sad,” Seungri says, after a few minutes. “I feel like I just watched Titanic.”

“Is that a compliment?” Jiyong asks lightly, but he’s watching Seungri. He can’t stop watching Seungri. The skin on his nose is burned, Jiyong notices. There are freckles on his forearms. His lips are dry. He isn’t wearing earrings. He’s still beautiful.

He looks up and catches Jiyong’s gaze, and offers Jiyong a half smile. “It’s good,” Seungri says. “But you already knew that.”

Jiyong’s heart is beating too fast, like he’s running a race. Jiyong doesn’t really like to run, and it’s just one song, and Jiyong isn’t afraid.

“You went into the military.”

“It seemed as good a time as any,” Seungri says. “Now it’s done.”

“It was sudden,” Jiyong says, and Seungri looks at him, his thick eyebrows set in a serious line. The bags under his eyes are dark. He isn’t wearing any make-up. Jiyong wonders if he wore sunglasses to come in.

“You mean like you wanting to get married?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and his tongue feels thick and heavy. Jiyong needs to take a shower, and his hair is tied up halfway in a knot on the top of his head, and maybe it’s just that no sleep is catching up with him.

“Let me listen to the song,” Seungri says, and Jiyong plays it for him.

Seungri’s face is unreadable. That’s new, because Seungri’s face has always been an open book for Jiyong. But Jiyong can’t read anything in his expression, and he yearns to move closer, to slip his fingers into the hair at the nape of Seungri’s neck and drag an expression out of him.

He wants to touch, but even though Seungri is standing next to Jiyong’s chair, it feels like he’s a million miles away.

“Why my voice?” Seungri asks, when the song finishes, and Jiyong massages his temples with his fingertips, taking a deep breath.

“I think I wrote this song for your voice,” Jiyong says quietly. _I think I wrote this song for you_.

“You think?” Seungri sounds so calm.

“Yes,” Jiyong replies, and Seungri nods.

“So how do you want me to sing it?”

“You know what?” Jiyong pulls the rubber band from his hair, and reties his hair. “Why don’t you just try it?”

“You’d trust me with that?” Seungri laughs, but it’s a bit fake, like Jiyong’s just told an entire audience about Seungri’s ‘baseball’ watching habits and Seungri has to pretend it’s all right. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

Jiyong thinks he’s supposed to laugh, too. Seungri’s pretending that this isn’t awkward and terrible, and Jiyong is supposed to play along. Seungri has, in the past couple of years, finally learned how to play the game.

Jiyong made up the game, but in the past couple of years, Jiyong’s forgotten all the rules. “Maknae,” Jiyong says. “Go sing.”

“Yes,” Seungri says, and he takes the lyrics with him, walking into the glass booth, and moving the microphone up so it’s at his height. “Where is your help?”

“Hopefully sleeping,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s laugh gets caught on his test recording. “We’ve had a rough week.”

“And yet you’re still here. Alone. You always _did_ try and do everything by yourself.”

“It’s my job,” Jiyong says.

“It just makes other people feel useless,” Seungri replies. “Or confused. None of us can read your mind.” Seungri adjusts his headphones. “We just assume everything is okay until you snap.”

“You wouldn’t want to read my mind,” Jiyong says, fixedly staring at his computer. “It’s quite scary in there. It’s best if people stay out.”

“Adults can make their own decisions.” Seungri clears his throat, and sings quietly, warming up his voice. “If they have all the facts.”

Jiyong knows that. Jiyong does, _does_ know that, but it’s so hard when he’s spent so long keeping it to himself.

Jiyong is greedy for praise, and admiration. Not for pity, and not for help.

“So why don’t you give the bridge a shot,” Jiyong says. “After the second chorus.”

Seungri does. It’s… raw, and rough, and Jiyong bets this is the first time Seungri has sang, with any sort of seriousness, since he went into the military.

It sounds good. Jiyong likes the way Seungri’s face twists as he sings, like he’s feeling each and every word. When Seungri was younger, he’d told them all he liked singing happy songs, because he wanted to uplift the audience. Jiyong had liked Seungri singing happy songs too, because Seungri hadn’t connected with the emotions in the sadder songs. Seungri hadn’t understood that sad songs can be just as uplifting, because they make people feel like they aren’t alone.

He’d started to get it, with ‘Monster’. The way Seungri had whispered “don’t go” had made Jiyong’s breath catch in his throat. But now, Jiyong can feel the passion in each word, like Seungri knows exactly what Jiyong means with this song. Seungri is all grown up, and he’s broken just like Jiyong’s broken.

It’s gorgeous, but sometimes Jiyong wants a different inflection on the words, or for Seungri to stop and take a breath, and Jiyong is relentless in his demands, pulling a performance out of Seungri that’s even more than he’d expected, and even better than he’d imagined in his head. Seungri looks at him between takes, eyes hiding more than they show.

“Still a perfectionist, I see.” Seungri comes out of the booth and approaches Jiyong, hands finding their way back into his pockets. “Everything just so.” From one pocket, he pulls out a mobile phone. It looks brand new. It’s the brand Daesung is endorsing, and Jiyong wonders if it was present. Jiyong doesn’t know. Jiyong talks to all his band members except Seungri, and none of them talk to him about Seungri. Jiyong has no idea what Seungri’s done in the past two years, except for what he knows from the television and what others have slipped up and told him, and Jiyong had grabbed at those tiny morsels of knowledge and buried them away to be examined later, maybe when they’ll hurt less. He’s still waiting.

Seungri starts typing into his phone, and Jiyong feels irrationally like Seungri’s phone is an enemy, because someone else is stealing a part of Seungri’s attention away from him. Jiyong wants all of Seungri’s focus… He wants those eyes looking at him like he’s everything. He doesn’t want Seungri to look away, even for a moment. Jiyong’s always been greedy.

Jiyong’s always been selfish.

“I haven’t changed,” Jiyong says, even though he’s not sure that’s true.

“I have,” Seungri replies, and he doesn’t look up from his phone. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Jiyong’s been meaning to get a fan, because no matter what, this studio is always hot. Jiyong likes to suffer, sort of, but the artists he works with don’t. The old Seungri would have whined. This new Seungri doesn’t even look at Jiyong without the glass between them. “I’m not stupid anymore.”

“You were never stupid.” Jiyong pulls up his hood, because he suddenly feels over-exposed. Jiyong’s never wanted to be transparent with anything but his music.

“Yes, I was,” Seungri says, and his eyes flicker up and catch Jiyong’s for a single moment before they quickly return to the screen. Seungri types so fast. Jiyong wonders if he’s typing a message to some girl Jiyong’s never met. If they exchange selcas. If Seungri’s grown out of his habit of making aegyo faces that make him look half his age and writing _I like being bitten_ in the subject lines.

Seungri’s eyes flicker up again, and he bites his lip when Jiyong tries to hold his gaze. It’s the first sign of discomfort Jiyong’s seen in Seungri this whole time, and the fingers around his heart loosen their grip just a little.

Seungri’s just got better masks than Jiyong does, now. Jiyong will just have to pay more attention if he wants to know what’s going on behind the loud laughs and smiles.

Jiyong’s good at paying attention to Seungri. At least, he used to be. Maybe he can be again. “Not stupid,” Jiyong says.

“Or maybe,” Seungri says, so quietly that Jiyong can barely make out the words, “I’ve just learned not to hope so much.”

“And here I thought all your dreams came true,” Jiyong says, lightly, and he ignores the tremble in his voice. “Famous Lee Seunghyun. Seungri of BIGBANG. You were listed as one of them most eligible bachelors in Korea last month in one of the tabloids.”

“Two behind TOP-hyung, and five behind Daesung,” Seungri says. “I didn’t know you read those things.”

“Only when the band is mentioned,” Jiyong says, but he’d seen Seungri’s face on the cover, along with pictures of Seungri leaving military service. Youngbae had gone to get him. It had been a strange echo of when Seungri had been cut from the band, all those years ago, and Youngbae had been the only one to see him off.

Jiyong has made so many mistakes.

“Still, living the dream, aren’t you?”

Seungri snorts, this tiny derisive sound that’s almost as hurtful as a slap, because before, Seungri never would have made that sound at Jiyong. “Hyung, if you think my dreams were ever that simple, maybe _you’re_ the one who is stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair. It’s messy. Jiyong wonders if there’s a hat in his bag. Seungri looks un-manicured, and it’s refreshing. It reminds Jiyong of how he was, how they both were, when they were still kids. Ten years and change ago. Seungri still looks so very young. His eyes though—his eyes are old.

“Don’t talk to your leader like that, maknae.”

“You’re not my leader right now,” Seungri says, with a tiny smile. “We’re just artists on the same label. And I’m doing you a favor.”

It hurts more than Jiyong would like to admit.

He pretends it doesn’t.

“I’m always your leader,” Jiyong says, and he reaches out, barely touching his fingers to Seungri’s arm, and Seungri shivers. “No matter what, I’m always going to be your leader.”

Seungri laughs, and it’s hollow. “I guess that’s true,” Seungri says, and he walks back into the recording booth. Jiyong watches as Seungri rubs at his wrist, like he’s looking for something that should be there but isn’t. He doesn’t look at Jiyong for the rest of the session, even when Jiyong speaks to him, and Jiyong clenches his back teeth together and doesn’t bite his nails.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Jiyong is incredibly fond of Seungri’s voice. As he listens to it over and over, mixing it carefully with his own, he can only marvel at its sweetness.

Seungri’s voice is so pure. It has a way of haunting Jiyong when he’s alone; when he’s thinking about lyrics, and when he’s composing a melody.

In the end, the sound of Seungri’s voice sinks into his bones and stays there, chilling him so much he writes around it.

People think he doesn’t like Seungri’s voice. The truth is, Jiyong likes it so much it’s unbearable, and he doesn’t want to listen to it over and over and over again; to keep listening until he can’t even close his eyes for fear he’ll hear it again.

Seungri’s voice is perfect in its own way, though, dulcet like frozen flavor-ice in the early summer, refreshing and delightful in all the places that Jiyong’s is hard. Jiyong’s voice used to have a little bit of that softness, too, but he’d finally managed to rip it away with alcohol and cigarettes.

He’d made Seungri record the chorus seventy times, and each take is a different kind of wonderful. He plays it back, adding his own voice in, and Jiyong can almost forget the way Seungri had left the studio without saying goodbye.

“I knew he was a better choice than me,” Chaerin says, when she drops by, and Jiyong scowls at the _I told you so_ implicit in her tone. “Is this what you imagined, oppa?” He eyes look a bit glossy. “It’s a really touching song.”

“More than I imagined,” Jiyong says, and he runs his tongue over his teeth. “More than I imagined.”

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

 

“What’s it about, though?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong twirls a piece of hair around his finger.

“Have you ever been in love, maknae?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri shakes his head no, eyes overeager as he leans his head on Jiyong’s shoulder. Jiyong is humming the melody to himself, and Seungri is playing the chords on Jiyong’s thigh as if Jiyong were a piano.

“Never,” Seungri says, and Jiyong likes that more than he should. Seungri’s shirt is too big, and Jiyong’s eyes linger on the stripe of exposed shoulder that taunts him as Seungri exhales against his neck. It’s worse than when Seungri doesn’t wear a shirt at all, because it makes Jiyong want to slowly peel it off of him. “Someday I’ll fall in love.” Seungri sounds wistful.

“Sometimes,” Jiyong says, dragging his eyes back to his notebook. “Love can make you do terrible things. Make you become a terrible person.”

“I thought love made you better?” Seungri says. “Made everything brighter, or something like that.”

“Love makes you look at the most frightening parts of yourself,” Jiyong says. “Loving someone can make you hurt them more than you ever anticipate. More than you can ever believe. You can’t help it.”

“It sounds scary, when you put it like that.”

“It is scary. And consuming.” Jiyong sighs, and leans his head on Seungri’s. Seungri’s hair tickles at his cheek and lips. “For me, the person I love becomes like air. And when they aren’t around, I can’t breathe. So I cling to them, trying to keep them close because without them I suffocate.”

“And that’s what the song is about?”

“You can try to forget, and try to erase, because it’s what’s best for both of you, but it lingers,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s fingers pause, and he presses his nose into Jiyong’s neck. “I’m so sorry, but I love you," he says, in English.

Seungri sighs, and Jiyong wants.

_da geojitmal_

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Jiyong and Teddy send Yang Hyun Suk a finished album at six am on August 4th, and Jiyong forces himself through three more hours of final design checks, two choreography run-throughs, and a costume fitting before he returns to his empty house and falls face down on his bed without taking his clothes off.

He expects to fall asleep immediately, but he doesn’t, and Gaho, who he’d picked up from Dami’s house on his way home, has trotted into his room and climbed up on the bed next to him, licking at Jiyong’s face as Jiyong lets the stress of the past week ease out of him.

Now that he’s done, he can’t turn off his thoughts. Seungri comes racing back to the forefront of his mind, and Jiyong tries to tuck away every detail, from the way Seungri’s nails had been filed square to the way some bits of hair at the nape of his neck had grown uneven.

Jiyong tries to stop himself from obsessing, but it’s all unfurling and stretching out in his head, and Seungri is the only thing there is, and Jiyong is helpless to fight it.

Jiyong wants control it, because Jiyong likes being in control more than anything else, but he can’t.

Jiyong scrunches his eyes closed, and Gaho whines for attention, and Jiyong absently pets him, Gaho’s wrinkled skin distracting him enough to fall into slumber.

He’ll dream of Seungri, probably, because Seungri has always been something Jiyong couldn’t make go away.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Jiyong tried not to think about Seungri, sometimes, back when they were all still together all the time, and how he’d have liked to take Seungri apart piece by piece with his hands and mouth, watching Seungri moan beneath him, letting Jiyong take and take and take, same as always.

Jiyong tried not to think about it, because the only thing stronger than Jiyong’s selfishness is Jiyong’s music, and Seungri was a part of that music that Jiyong had come to rely on, a soft, angelic tenor that Jiyong was still grappling with, still taking up the challenge of how to use. Still figuring it out.

Just like he was still figuring out how exist with Seungri without trying to tear him up and tear him open and watch him bleed, because Seungri would be so pretty like that. Jiyong penned lyrics about it, and let Seungri sit on his lap and tell him stories with an indulgent smile on his face, pretending he wasn’t thinking about tying Seungri’s hands together and—

Jiyong had his coping methods, and it was fine as long as no one knew about them. Jiyong had liked his playboy reputation, because it had been better than other reputations he could have earned back then.

Jiyong had been reckless. Once, he had been too reckless.

The man had been tall, soft features and softer lips, and Jiyong had loved the way he had to lean up to kiss him, and the way his hands had slid into Jiyong’s back pockets. He’d met the guy at a club, and Jiyong had known, then and there, that he wanted to take him home—or to a love hotel, really, but it’s all the same, in the long run, because Jiyong doesn’t really have a home, what with the way he’s constantly traveling and staying late in the studio. Jiyong wanted to take that tall, handsome stranger home and fuck him, and forget, for a time, about all the things he couldn’t have.

Jiyong had felt safe enough, and perhaps that was the alcohol clouding his brain, because the club was filled with YG Family and people that Jiyong respects. Still, Jiyong felt relatively invincible with the taller man’s tongue slicking along the back of his teeth. It wasn’t even the main bathroom—there was another, closer one to where most people were partying, and the man, fuck if Jiyong can remember his name, was one of Se7en’s friends, or maybe one of Jaejoong’s, maybe both, all firm thighs and large hands. Maybe Jiyong was a little drunk, a little too secure; no one from his band was at the party, and the other, older YG artists all had their own secrets to worry about. And Jiyong really didn’t think anyone would walk in there. Less convenient, more likely to be used for exactly what Jiyong was using it for.

Jiyong heard the door open just as he’d worked his hand into the man’s pants. The man moved to cover Jiyong, obscuring his face from whomever was standing at the door. “Oh, sorry,” said a familiar voice, and Jiyong’s heart had dropped into his stomach. “I didn’t think anyone would be using this bathro-“

The voice cut off, and Jiyong had closed his eyes. With anyone else, the man in front of him would have been enough to hide his identity. But not with Seungri, because Seungri knows Jiyong’s wardrobe as well as he knows his own.

“Hyung?” Seungri had asked, in a voice that crackled, sounding dry and disbelieving. “Hyung, what…?”

Jiyong had sighed, and his throat had felt tight, beating like a hammer in his chest and he’d stepped out of the other man’s shadow, revealing himself to Seungri in the dim bathroom light. “Maknae,” he’d said, and Seungri shook his head, eyes the widest Jiyong had ever seen them. His face had been pale, and he’d sucked his lower lip into his mouth. “Outside, maknae,” Jiyong had said, and he flickered his eyes apologetically at the man, who nodded empathetically as Jiyong slipped away. Jiyong walked past Seungri, out back into the party. The music was loud, out there, and Jiyong remembers that he could barely hear it over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. Jiyong had felt sick, like he wanted to throw up, because this was something he maybe never wanted his band to know. Wanted Seungri to know, especially.

He weaved through the people dancing on the floor, and he instinctively knew Seungri was following him. Past the dance floor, on the deserted third floor balcony, the cool air had rushed into his lungs, and it calmed him a bit, but then Seungri had come to stand beside him at the railing, three or four feet away. Jiyong’s heart had clenched, because before, Seungri would have been so close Jiyong would have been able to nudge Seungri with his arm. It felt like an ocean between them.

“Your lipstick is smudged,” Seungri had said, and his voice had sounded choked and strange, and Jiyong’s hand had flown up to his mouth to check. “You really were kissing him,” Seungri had said then, and he had wrapped his arms around himself. Jiyong had wanted to hug him, but he knew it wasn’t… that that wouldn’t solve anything.

“Yes,” Jiyong said. “I was.”

“You like guys?” Seungri asked, eyes trained on the ground. “Does… Do the others know? Is it just me you’ve been lying to?” He spit the last part out, and he was shaking, a bit, and Jiyong swallowed heavily.

“Yes,” Jiyong replied. “I like guys. And no, the others don’t know.” Jiyong had run a hand through his hair, just starting to grow out. The bangs were long enough that they tickled his eyebrows, and the patch of skin between them. Just long enough to be irritating. Jiyong sighed again, and they rustled. The early spring air was cold. “I haven’t been lying to you-“

“I was at another party,” Seungri interrupted. “I heard you might be here. I thought I might surprise you. Didn’t know you’d be busy,” Seungri said, and he had laughed a little, but the sound was weird, so weird. Everything was weird, Jiyong had thought.

“Maknae, I…” Jiyong stopped, and studied Seungri’s face in the flashing club lights. Seungri’s mouth was turned into a frown, and his eyes looked dull. “It’s not something that needs to affect the band. I like girls too, just, sometimes…”

“I don’t know why you didn’t tell any of us,” Seungri said. “Why you didn’t tell _me_. We live together!”

Jiyong bristled. “What’s that got to do with anything?” Jiyong said. “It’s not like I was going to molest you in your sleep. It doesn’t _matter_ for us!” The lie was thick on his tongue. Jiyong can remember how much conviction he’d tried to imbue in the words. How much he wanted Seungri to believe that.

Jiyong had always been an excellent liar.

“You don’t get it,” Seungri said, and suddenly he looked… angry, or maybe scared. It was too dark for Jiyong to really see, with only the faint flicker of blue strobe lights leaking out onto the balcony. It had been enough light to see Seungri’s hunched frame, and the way he shivered a bit from the chill. Jiyong reached out, to grab Seungri’s arm like always, or to tug on his jacket, or to do something to stop him from walking away from him, but Seungri flinched away. “Of course it matters,” Seungri had said, and Jiyong had heard the scratch in Seungri’s ever honest voice. “I’d never considered that you might-“

“I won’t,” Jiyong had said fervently, and Seungri’s eyelashes had fluttered as he blinked. “The band is music. Music is more important than everything.”

“Everything?” Seungri asked, and Jiyong’s palms were sweating, and Jiyong recalls the way Seungri’s mouth had seemed as ripe as a summer peach in the darkness. Jiyong wanted, so badly, to claim it.

Seungri, Jiyong had known, wasn’t for Jiyong to take.

“Yes,” Jiyong had said, and he fumbled around in his pocket for a fag, and Seungri had stayed, pulling out the lighter he carried even though he’d never smoked and hated the smell of cigarettes, and lit Jiyong’s.

Seungri had looked innocent behind the smoke, pale and pensive, and Jiyong had wanted to lean forward and ruin him.

They never spoke of it again, but Jiyong can remember with perfect clarity the way Seungri had flushed in the morning, when they’d woken up in their living room on the couch, having fallen asleep there last night while drinking and concentrating far too hard on saying nothing to each other. Seungri had looked away, turning his head down when Jiyong had tried to catch his gaze and prove to them both that nothing had changed.

“What?” Jiyong had said, and his voice had been rough with sleep, but he hadn’t moved away. Seungri, whose head still rested on Jiyong’s belly, had exhaled, and Jiyong could feel the heat of his breath through the thin silk of his shirt.

“I want to be most important to you,” Seungri said, and his voice was small, and Jiyong had strained to hear it. The words had hit him like a crashing wave of cold ocean water, though, leaving Jiyong feeling completely awake. Jiyong had let one hand stretch down and find Seungri’s hair, casually carding through it as his thoughts circled around and around in his head, a cat chasing its tail.

“Music is most important to me,” Jiyong had said, and Seungri had nuzzled his nose into Jiyong’s stomach. It had tickled. Later, Jiyong’s shirt would smell like Seungri’s shampoo.

“I’ve always known that,” Seungri replied. “But sometimes I wish.”

Jiyong had bitten on his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed, and the blood tasted metallic in his mouth.

Jiyong had always been an excellent liar.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

While Seungri is in the military, Jiyong writes him a seventeen-page letter.

It’s more of a poem than a letter, and it’s just Jiyong’s stream of thought as he recalls, crystal clear, Seungri’s parted lips and the taste of his skin.

It’s seventeen pages of Jiyong’s every thought, wish, selfish desire that he’s bottled up and swallowed down because he has to, and seventeen pages for all the things he hadn’t managed to keep inside of himself; the things that had spilled out and through his fingers and all over everything Jiyong touched, but mostly over Seungri, who Jiyong has never been able to let go.

It’s seventeen pages of almost-song-lyrics, of chart-topping words that will never see a chart, and of things Jiyong will never be able to say aloud because Jiyong can sing about his tortured soul until his throat is raw but he’s never told his mother he loves her to her face.

It’s seventeen pages that Jiyong folds up and jams into an envelope and never sends, shoving them deep into a drawer where his wife will never see it, and pretends writing it all down was enough.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“Jiyong,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong blearily opens his eyes and realizes he’s holding his phone against his ear. Responsible, even in his sleep. “Open the door, I’m outside.”

“Coming,” Jiyong mumbles into the phone, and his body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, and he’s sunk so deep into his bed he’s sure he’ll never be able to get up.

“Today, Jiyong. I’m not hanging up, because if I do, you’ll go back to sleep, and I’ve already been waiting ten minutes.”

“Most people call _before_ they come over,” Jiyong says grumpily. “I have earned the right to sleep the sleep of the dead.”

“If I had called before I came over, there’d be no guilt to make you roll out of bed.”

“Fuck you,” Jiyong says, and he rolls out of bed. He hits the floor with a thump, and hopes nothing is broken. He opens his eyes again and gets a face-full of Gaho, who looks like he badly needs to go out. “Okay, I get it. I’m moving, I’m moving.”

Jiyong is pretty sure he smells terrible, and he’s still wearing the clothes he fell asleep in, but he makes it in record time to the front door. He opens it, and Youngbae is sitting on the porch, typing into his mobile phone with one earbud in. Gaho slips between Jiyong’s legs and runs outside to pee, and Youngbae laughs as he’s almost bowled over.

“Look, I even saved you a clean-up.”

“I’m _tired_ ,” Jiyong whines, and Youngbae laughs a little louder.

“Let’s go inside.” He holds up a bag of take-out. “I brought us a rookie-dinner.”

Youngbae walks past Jiyong into the house, and Gaho follows him in. Jiyong locks the door.

“At first I thought it was weird when you bought a house,” Youngbae says. “And it’s an hour outside of Seoul.”

“It’s so quiet,” Jiyong says. “Nothing else in my life is quiet.”

“I did say ‘at first’,” Youngbae replies, and he sets the food on Jiyong’s empty living room floor, and scouts around behind the sofa for the floor cushions. Jiyong just watches him, still trying to work himself out of his sleepy stupor. “Where’s the lady of the house?”

“Japan,” Jiyong says. “She…”

Youngbae looks up at Jiyong when Jiyong trails off, and pulls his sunglasses down to reveal his eyes. “What?”

“She probably won’t be coming back.”

Youngbae sits down on the couch. “What the heck, Jiyong?”

“Well, I mean, I’m sure she’ll be back, to get her things, and to nag me about throwing out that month-old take-out in the fridge, and to work out the divorce proceedings, but in a very metaphorical way, she won’t be back.”

“Oh,” Youngbae says. “I… don’t know what to say.” Youngbae swallows, and takes his jacket off.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Jiyong says, and he walks past the couch, over to where he keeps an elliptical so that he can exercise and watch TV at the same time, and pulls the cushions out. “I moved the cushions.”

“Is that why your solo album is all break-up songs?” Youngbae stands, and moves to the center of the floor, unpacking the take-out. There’s all sorts of stuff, but most importantly, there’s jjajangmyeon, the black sauce noodles Jiyong’s fond of. How fitting, Jiyong thinks, that Youngbae brought break-up noodles for dinner.

“No,” Jiyong answers, throwing two cushions on the floor and sitting on the red one because it’s closer.

“Okay,” Youngbae says, and he hands Jiyong a pair of wooden chopsticks. “Do you need to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Jiyong says. “It’s not like my heart is broken.”

“It’s not? Usually when you end things with the person you love, it hurts.” Youngbae blinks. “At least, it would hurt if my girlfriend and I broke up.”

“We aren’t in love.” Jiyong picks up a big bite of black-sauce noodles, and he doesn’t care if they get on his shirt. There’s no one here to impress, just Youngbae, who Jiyong’s known for the better part of his life, and has seen him in far worse states than this.

“This may be a silly question,” Youngbae says, scratching at his neck. He hasn’t even broken his chopsticks apart yet, and he’s staring at Jiyong like Jiyong has suddenly grown a second head. “But why did you guys get married, if you weren’t in love?”

“Both of us had demons we thought we could use each other to chase away.” Jiyong says it around his food, and Youngbae looks like he’s torn between chiding Jiyong about his manners and asking more questions. “Her demons, I think, turned into something else that she wanted to keep, after all.”

They eat in silence. Youngbae starts to talk, several times, but he seems almost disturbed by Jiyong’s calm. Finally, when he opens a foil roll of kimbap, the seaweed rolls filled with tuna, Youngbae speaks again. “How was the recording?”

“What are you asking, specifically?”

“Teddy says you recorded with Seungri.”

“Ah,” Jiyong says, and now his calm is disappearing. Maybe Jiyong is just now waking up, and realizing how heavy their conversation topics have been; how heavy they are. “Did you come over here with take-out as a tactic to make me spill all my secrets?”

“Yes,” Youngbae says. “Is it working? It was Bom-noona’s advice. Psy-hyung said I should get you drunk, but you just get more tightlipped when you're drunk, and I’m not a drinker, so you’d know that was ploy.”

“So you’ve been planning your ambush.”

Youngbae grins, and Jiyong can never really stay angry at Youngbae when he grins like that. “For the past fifteen hours or so. You’ve been asleep awhile.”

“Seungri has changed.” Jiyong licks his lips, and finds black sauce there, delicious and sweet.

“He has,” Youngbae says, and then he hesitates. “He changed before he went into the military.”

Jiyong stares down at the kimbap, then takes one and shoves it into his mouth. He doesn’t look at Youngbae. He chews and chews, and then swallows, buying time.

Now he looks up at Youngbae, who is staring at him steadily. “There are,” Jiyong says carefully, “a lot of heartbreak songs on my album.”

Youngbae’s eyebrows rise slowly, and he tilts his head to the side to study Jiyong, and it reminds Jiyong of Boss. Jiyong watches as he connects the pieces, his eyes widening. “Jiyong…”

“I’ve always been selfish,” Jiyong says. “And greedy. And over all these years, the only thing that’s changed is how much effort it takes to hold it back.”

Youngbae opens another roll of kimbap. “Eat,” Youngbae says gruffly. “Just… eat.”

“When I saw him again,” Jiyong says, because now that he’s started he can’t seem to stop, “all I could think about was how much I wanted to lock him away so no one else could look at him. Isn’t that crazy?”

“A little,” Youngbae says. “But you’ve always been crazy.”

Youngbae sighs. Jiyong tries to breathe.

“Seungri sounded great on the song. Chaerin was smug.”

“It’s a beautiful song,” Youngbae offers, and Jiyong smiles grimly as Youngbae wriggles his toes in his socks. Jiyong’s got the same pair—they’re BOY LONDON and they’d both sort of quarreled over it at the time but Jiyong actually could care less these days. His might even have holes in the toes, now.

“It’s a hopeless song,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae shakes his head.

“I don’t think so,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong eats.

 

 

 

**TYING YOU UP**

 

 

They’ve all got matching rings, and matching necklaces, and matching shoes. It doesn’t mean anything, except that they’re twenty-somethings with money to burn and they like to spend it on buying lavish presents for each other just because they can, and similar enough tastes that they like to buy the same things. Jiyong buys his mother a house, his sister a car, and Youngbae a necklace that weighs more than he does, and that’s just the way things are done.

But the bracelet he wears the most is the one he bought for himself and knew, as soon as he clasped it, would look perfect around Seungri’s wrist, with its slightly odd-shaped bone that makes it fit perfectly in a circle of Jiyong’s first finger and thumb.

Jiyong had liked the look on Seungri’s face when he opened it; the way his eyes lit up in delight before he bit it back down to a more tame enthusiasm. “But you’ve already bought this one for yourself,” Seungri said, and he looked hesitantly to where a duplicate hung from Jiyong’s own arm. “That’s again BIGBANG’s rules.”

“We can both have it,” Jiyong said, like he didn’t throw hissy fits about that sort of thing on a daily basis, and when Seungri put his on, Jiyong’s started to feel heavier and heavier. “When I saw it, I knew it would suit you.”

“Then why are you still wearing it?” Seungri asks, smiling like a cat now that he feels on surer ground.

“Because it’s mine,” Jiyong says. “Just like you.”

“Is this your way of staking your claim?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong just smiles, and tries not to imagine Seungri naked on his bed, wearing nothing but that bracelet as Jiyong writes his name across his skin over and over again until Seungri is the color of ink.

Jiyong wonders if Seungri still wears his, but suspects he doesn’t.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Jiyong’s album drops on August 18th, at midnight on his twenty-eightth birthday. He’s not able to look at the chart as it drops, because he’s in a dance studio, practicing the choreography for his comeback on Inkigayo in two days, but he receives seventeen texts congratulating him for charting eight songs in the top ten, which Jiyong thinks is pretty impressive considering he’s up against Jo Kwon’s second solo album, which is selling like crazy. Jiyong is pleased, and grateful, and relieved.

‘Hungry’ is a good song. Jiyong thinks it carries the flavor of the whole album, and it’s the sort of melancholy dance track he’s always been known for. It’s not a love song.

Jiyong finally makes his way home in the early hours of the morning, and when he logs onto his laptop, and checks the charts, his heart stops in his chest.

‘Shut the Door’ is number two on the Melon charts, right after ‘Hungry’, and it’s almost even with his leading single. Jiyong looks at the chart, and he’s not sure which one is going to hit the roof first.

Yang Hyun Suk calls him in the morning. “Come in,” he says. “We’re changing things up.”

Jiyong drives to work and hears his own song on the radio three times. When he walks into the agency building, he immediately finds the elevator and heads up to the top floor, where President Yang is waiting for him.

“You’ll be simultaneously promoting ‘Hungry’ and ‘Shut the Door’,” he says, and Jiyong, even though he’d expected it, feels strangely surprised. “They’ll be a good pairing; a love song and a dance song. You and Seungri will shoot a music video next week for ‘Shut the Door’, and you’ll perform both tracks on Inkigayo this weekend.”

“But-“

“You’ve learned choreography faster,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong has, and Seungri has, and it’s like the world is conspiring against him.

Something of his feelings must show in his face, because Yang Hyun Suk softens, just a little. Not much, because he isn’t the sort, but Jiyong’s known him a long time.

“It’s a really good song, Jiyong,” he says, and the praise is enough, Jiyong thinks, to get him through the next two days alive.

Seungri is standing in the middle of the dance studio when Jiyong gets there, talking to Jaewook, who is discussing choreography with a stressed look on his face.

“Oh, Jiyong-ah, you’re here, good.” Jaewook is walking out the opposite door. “I’ll be right back.”

Jiyong walks over to stand next to Seungri and doesn’t look at him. Seungri smells like he’d opened his eyes and came here, with that hint of his natural musk and the laundry detergent he only uses on his sheets clinging to his skin and clothes.

“Sorry you got dragged out of bed,” Jiyong says lowly, and Seungri looks at him, surprised.

“How did you-“

“I know what you look like when you’ve just woken up,” is Jiyong’s response, and Seungri makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat.

“Right,” Seungri says. “I suppose two years isn’t long enough to forget that,” Seungri says, and Jiyong slouches forward a little and think about cigarettes.

“I’ve never forgotten anything about you,” Jiyong admits. “Though I’ve tried.” And whatever Seungri might have said in reply is lost to Jaewook’s return. He’s got two dancers with him, Gahee and Jihye, and both of them look as tired as Jiyong feels. He offers them a slow smile he doesn’t feel, but performance is Jiyong’s specialty. This isn’t his stuffy recording studio anymore.

“We’re going to block something out with two dancers for now, but I think we’ll have four more,” Jaewook says. “But it’s a slow song, so we’ll probably do something similar to what we did with ‘Love Song’.”

“No,” Jiyong says. “It needs something… unexpected.”

“How about a mirror?” Seungri’s voice is unexpected, for some reason, and Jiyong looks at him. The bags under his eyes are pronounced. He has a zit in the corner of his mouth.

“A mirror?” Jiyong ponders the idea. “Like doing everything in opposites?”

“The song is about two people letting go, right? About knowing you’re wrong for someone but wanting to keep them anyway. About being separated by a shut door. So let’s have imagined glass between us, both of us reaching but being unable to cross the distance?”

“That sounds epic,” Jaewook says, and Jiyong crosses his arms.

“That doesn’t sound a little, I don’t know, _gay_ to you?” Jiyong stares at the floor as he speaks, under the pretence of admiring the way his new sneakers look on his feet.

“Oh, silly me,” Seungri says. “Let’s put on lipstick, fishnets and gold dresses, and kiss boys.” Jiyong flinches.

He doesn’t want to remember the way Seunghyun had slid his tongue across Seungri’s lower lip. He didn’t want to remember the way Seungri hadn’t protested too much. Seungri wouldn’t even kiss him on the cheek the year before, but he’d let Seunghyun slip him the tongue. Jiyong had seen red for three days, and Seunghyun had gloated about it when it was just the two of them, because he knew it’d get under Jiyong’s skin, even if he didn’t know exactly why.

“You’re too protective of maknae,” Seunghyun had said, and Jiyong hadn’t wanted to agree with him, because it would mean that Jiyong wasn’t keeping enough inside. That Jiyong needed to work harder to keep it all to himself.

He's brought out of his own memory by Gahee piping up.

“I think it could be really beautiful,” Gahee says. “When I listened to the song this morning, it made me want to cry.”

“I’m sorry,” Seungri says, reflexively, and Gahee shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “It was a good cry. I want to listen again and again.”

“But why?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong turns away, hooking his thumbs through his belt-loops.

“Because it’s something I can connect to,” Gahee says, and Jiyong smiles, just a little.

“I hate that you’re always right,” Seungri says later, as they sit sweaty on the floor. “Even if it takes me years to figure out you were right.”

He looks angry, or frustrated, and Jiyong doesn’t know what to say. “I’m not _always_ right,” Jiyong says, and he thinks about hallways, and Seungri’s collar bones, and the way he’d thought Seungri would stay. “Not at all.”

“About music, I mean,” Seungri clarifies. “Everything you’ve ever told me about music has been true, so far.”

“Music is important,” Jiyong says. “Music can change your life.”

“I always thought you were being melodramatic about everything,” Seungri says. “But I guess not.” Seungri stands, and offers Jiyong his hand. Jiyong satres at I for a moment. There’s a tan line on Seungri’s wrist. “Well?”

Jiyong takes the hand, and as soon as he’s up, Seungri’s moving back quickly like Jiyong’s made of venom.

He’s not far off, Jiyong figures, and he doesn’t take offense. “Let’s get this wrapped up,” Jiyong says, and Seungri nods, and they run through it seven more times, enough to leave Jiyong short of breath, and short on energy.

It’s good, because then he doesn’t have the strength to wonder about why Seungri is watching him so carefully from across the room, singing along to the song as it plays on the stereo system.

Seungri leaves as soon as they’re done, and Jiyong feels lost, drowning in all the feelings he can’t make go away.

“Let me go,” Seungri sings in the chorus, and it’s just as impossible to do as Jiyong’s verses make it seem, because maknae has always been the one Jiyong liked the best; the one Jiyong wanted to keep, and two years of distance haven’t made that urge any fainter.

Jiyong’s art has always imitated Jiyong’s life, and this time isn’t any different.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

“The fans think I like Seungri best,” Jiyong says into the camera, smiling like a fox. He likes the way that expression looks on television. He likes the way he looks clever instead of just tired. “But actually, I like Daesung.”

They all laugh, but later, when Jiyong sits down next to Seungri on the couch, Seungri gets up and walks away. Jiyong finally corners him at the end of the night, sitting down on Seungri’s lap and grabbing a fistful of his sweatshirt to drag Seungri closer.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I thought you liked me best,” Seungri says angrily, and Jiyong snorts.

“I like Youngbae best,” he says, and he pushes his hands through Seungri’s fluffy hair. “Youngbae is my best friend.”

“Oh,” Seungri says, and Jiyong clenches his hand, tugging at Seungri’s hair hard enough to hurt, and tilting Seungri’s face up toward him.

“It’s all a game, maknae. Interpersonal relationships are a game, and if you take it all too seriously, you’ll lose.”

“Lose?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “And I hate to lose.”

“People have feelings.”

“Not me,” Jiyong says. “I can’t afford to waste my feelings on people. I need them for music.”

Jiyong’s not sure why, but something changes in Seungri’s eyes, like shutters falling in a window. Jiyong doesn’t like that.

“It’s a game,” Seungri repeats slowly. “Okay, I get it.”

“Good,” Jiyong says, and he leans forward until their foreheads are resting together, and Seungri shudders as Jiyong’s breath mingles with his.

Seungri’s hands, resting on Jiyong’s lap, curl into useless fists. “I understand,” Seungri says again, and Jiyong wonders if he really does.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Games are what Jiyong plays with people to get everything he wants.

Games are what Jiyong likes, because games mean that people are always coming to him for the next move, and Jiyong can decide whether they move forward two spaces or go back to start. Games keep Jiyong from feeling to sad when people ultimately leave him… after all, it’s easy to start a new round.

Maybe, too, Jiyong just loves the thrill of a gamble. Of tossing the dice and seeing how things turn out.

But Seungri isn’t a game. When the cameras are off, and Jiyong sneaks into Seungri’s room, sitting on the edge of his bed and watching his eyelashes flutter in slumber, Jiyong feels like it’s all or nothing, and it’s absolutely terrifying.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

At Inkigayo recording, Jiyong revels in the cheers of the crowd. It’s been two long years and Jiyong’s missed the stage, more than he’d ever thought he would.

Seungri has missed it too- he can see it in the fevered look in his eyes and the width of his smile before they start to sing, and the way he reaches out and touches outstretched fan hands before his manager demurely tells him he’s not supposed to rile them up like that. Jiyong does his usual blank face at them but on the inside he feels giddy.

When they start to sing though, Seungri looking into Jiyong’s eyes as he sings and Jiyong doing the same, Jiyong forgets about the crowd, and the screams, and how much this performance has to be exactly right, because singing in front of Seungri is the stage he missed most of all.

After they finish, in one take, which never happens because Jiyong is a perfectionist and there’s always something that can be better, Seungri blinks at him, quick in the way he always does when he’s nervous, and offers him a tentative smile. “The audience cried.”

“That’s why we can’t re-record,” Jiyong says. “It’s already perfect.”

“I missed a note, toward the end.”

“I didn’t notice,” Jiyong says, because he had been caught in some sort of spell. “Do you want to get lunch?” He doesn’t even think about the question, as he asks it, but afterwards he feels stupid.

Of course Seungri doesn’t want to get lunch. Jiyong had shown Seungri the worst, scariest sides of himself and if Seungri knew what was good for himself, he’d never want to spend more time with Jiyong than he had to.

“You’ve changed too,” Seungri says, after a pause that’s too long to be natural. “You used to be more like a bull in a china shop where people’s feelings were concerned.”

“Then I broke my favorite dishes, the really rare and expensive ones I’d kept for years, and I’ve felt the loss ever since,” Jiyong mumbles, and Seungri licks his lips.

“I have time for lunch,” Seungri says. “If you really want to.”

Jiyong does.

They sit across from each other in a waffle shop, both of them wearing hats and sunglasses to disguise themselves. Seungri, in Jiyong’s opinion, doesn’t really need a hat… It’s not like he has purple hair, but with how observant their fans are, Jiyong doesn’t begrudge him the extra one he always keeps in his car for emergencies.

They walk there from the studio, the August humidity making the walk a little uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the space between them. Before, Seungri would have been walking close enough to jostle, and Jiyong would have held onto his elbow, or slung an arm around Seungri’s shoulders, pretending like Seungri wasn’t tall enough to make it a little uncomfortable.

They don’t speak until they order, and Jiyong, without thinking, orders Seungri’s favorite, and doesn’t really think about it until Seungri startles next to him.

“You still like that, right?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri nods, gnawing on his lower lip. Jiyong wraps his arms around himself and cocks his hip, waiting patiently for their order.

“I’m always surprised when you remember things like that,” Seungri says. “Friendships were never really your top priority.”

“I remember everything about you,” Jiyong says. “I missed you.”

Seungri doesn’t respond, but there’s a softening in his shoulders.

Seungri dives into the waffle, because Seungri has never been able to turn down desserts, and Jiyong wonders if this really counts as lunch. He’s not sure what to talk about. The silence isn’t comfortable.

Seungri looks up at him, and his eyes are over-bright, and it reminds Jiyong of years ago, when a treat like this was almost beyond their budget. Now Jiyong lives alone in a giant house outside of Seoul, drives a car that costs more than most people make in three years, and he’d trade it all to go back to that time.

Jiyong’s greed has always been different from other people’s greed.

Seungri has a bit of whipped cream on his upper lip. Jiyong’s eyes stick on it, and his hand trembles with the need to wipe it off.

“What?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong gives in to his urge, reaching forward and scraping his thumb across Seungri’s mouth.

Seungri freezes, and Jiyong doesn’t freeze too until his thumb is in his mouth. The cream is sweet, and Seungri’s eyes are round and staring.

Jiyong wants to keep him. Jiyong wants to grab him by the front of his shirt, and drag him across the table, and see if his lips taste the same as the cream.

Seungri licks at his lips, getting the remainder of the cream, and Jiyong wonders if looking at Seungri will ever be any easier.

“Thanks,” Seungri says, and he uses impolite speech, and Jiyong wants to correct him but he’s always sort of liked that about Seungri, because it’s never meant that Seungri didn’t respect him.

Jiyong misses being important to Seungri enough that it hurts to sit in front of him and mean nothing.

Jiyong gulps, and stands. “I just remembered I have something else to do,” Jiyong says shakily, and his body is flashing hot and cold. “I’m sorry to leave so suddenly.”

He practically runs out of the shop, and he doesn’t let himself think about it at all until he’s sitting in his car, driving home.

“I’m so stupid,” Jiyong says to himself, and the radio is off, so his words echo in the silence of the car. “I’m so stupid.”

Gaho greets him at the door, and Jiyong smiles a little, slipping out of his shoes and wandering into the kitchen where he keeps the treats.

His mobile beeps, alerting him of a text message.

_i missed u 2_ the message says, and Jiyong wants to take and take and take everything Seungri has until Seungri belongs to him.

He ignores the message, because he doesn’t know what to say that wouldn’t be horrifyingly transparent.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

It’s weird to be anonymous.

It’s dark in the club, and all of them came out tonight, still on a high from a performance, and Seungri and Youngbae are showing off on the dance floor, while Daesung talks quietly with Chuljoon across the table. Jiyong is sitting next to Seunghyun, close enough that Seunghyun can feel the vibration of his arm as he shakes with leftover adrenaline.

Jiyong survives on the bread of audience cheers and the water of critical success, and maybe that’s why he’s been getting thinner and thinner, once round cheeks becoming drawn, and once bright eyes filled with an energy that’s more frenetic than joyous. He’s just too full on applause for there to be room in his belly for anything else.

There’s always another performance, another scandal, and another cigarette.

Jiyong would rather light up a joint, but it’s clear South Korea won’t accept that, now.

He’d been thinking about quitting music, when all of that went down, but it’d been a fleeting thought, not a serious one.

There’s nothing else Jiyong can really do, anyway. He was never really good at school, in the way that maknae was, and he never really wanted to do anything but make music.

“What are you thinking about so seriously?” Seunghyun asks, his deep voice carrying easily even in the rowdy club.

“Other career choices,” Jiyong says.

“You’d be a serial killer if you weren’t a musician,” Seunghyun says, and Jiyong laughs, but not too loud because it’s probably true. “You’re fixating and bizarre.”

“I just have an obsessive personality,” Jiyong says, and Seunghyun raises an eyebrow. Jiyong turns and looks out onto the dance floor below them, looking for Seungri.

He spots him, dancing with Youngbae, one of their dancers, Eunyoung, between them. Jiyong tries not to feel jealous, and it mostly works.

He hears Seunghyun laughing, and turns back to him. “What?”

“No, _I_ have an obsessive personality. You know what I do? Collect toys.” Seunghyun takes a sip of his champagne. “You’ve got a creepy personality. You probably collect maknae’s hair in a shoebox under your bed.”

Jiyong frowns. “I do not.” He shifts in his seat, and makes him self not look back down at maknae, who somehow still has the energy to grind his hips against-

“You just hadn’t thought of it yet,” Seunghyun says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Now you’ll start.”

“It’s not like that,” Jiyong defends, and his beer is getting a little warm. Jiyong won’t drink it if it gets any warmer, so he takes a sip.

“What’s Jiyong got that look on his face for?” Kush says, sliding into the booth and pushing Seunghyun into Jiyong’s side. Jiyong spills his beer and swears.

“It’s nothing. Just TOP-hyung picking on me.”

“Picking on you, huh?” Kush laughs. “About what?”

“How Jiyong is sort of crazy,” Seunghyun says without any reservation, and Jiyong swears again.

“Well, all the best artists are crazy,” Kush says. “It’s like, a prerequisite.”

“I’m not crazy,” Jiyong says. “I just… like everything a certain way.”

Seungri and Youngbae come back to the table, laughing and bumping elbows, and Jiyong watches a bead of sweat slowly slide down from Seungri’s temple to his neck, before it disappears into his black t-shirt.

“Right, of course,” Seunghyun says wryly, and Jiyong barely hears him.

Youngbae is touching Seungri too much. Jiyong wants to lock Seungri away and never let anyone touch him ever again.

And maybe he’s a little bit crazy.

Seungri meets Jiyong’s gaze, and flushes, licking his lips, and Jiyong remembers the way Seungri had looked, the night he’d caught Jiyong with that guy in the bathroom.

Jiyong’s not supposed to want Seungri like this.

“What are you doing, maknae?” Youngbae asks. “Sit down already.”

“Just playing a game,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s heart is beating too fast.

And Jiyong thinks if he’s not crazy yet, he will be.

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Seunghyun calls at eleven at night. “You haven’t had a birthday party yet,” he says, and Jiyong sighs.

“No time this year.”

“Teddy and I disagree. Teddy and I think you need to put on your fly-est kicks and get into Seoul right now instead of moping in your house.”

“Are you drunk?” Jiyong asks.

“If I say yes, will you come out?”

“Probably,” Jiyong says, and he’s already moving toward his closet, shuffling through his things looking for that t-shirt he likes with the naked woman on the front. “Give me an hour.”

“No,” Seunghyun says.

“Hyung, you know that’s me hurrying- I usually take an hour to get ready, let alone meet you somewhere.”

“Daesung said he’d be here in a half an hour, and he has thirty face-lotions he puts on from that princess make-up counter he’s got in his room.”

“Daesung’s coming out? Is it your birthday or mine?”

“Every day is my birthday,” Seunghyun says, and he slurs. “Come out. Come out twenty minutes ago.”

“Okay, okay,” Jiyong says, laughing, and he quickly call Youngbae to tell him to come along too, because he knows Seunghyun didn’t call Youngbae because he lives in constant fear of getting chewed out by him on the phone.

“TOP-hyung and Teddy are drunk and throwing me an impromptu birthday party,” Jiyong says, as soon as Youngbae answers the phone. “Hurry up and meet me.”

“Teddy already called me,” Youngbae says. “I’m going to pick you up so you don’t have to drive.”

Youngbae shows up twenty minutes later, wearing even more leather than usual, but still managing to be without a shirt. “You do realize wearing a jacket and no shirt under it is kind of ridiculous,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae checks his mohawk in the mirror.

“Says the man wearing women’s jeans with purple hair that’s permed into a lady-wave,” Youngbae replies, and Jiyong figures to each their own.

The drive into Seoul is loud, because Youngbae plays nasty R&B music at top volume as he drives, singing along to all the dirtiest lines in English, and Jiyong loves that this same man was in church this morning, and probably still hasn’t slept with his naïve, adorable girlfriend that Jiyong’d taken a liking to.

Jiyong, for the first time in a long time, feels twenty-eight and not fifty, and the night's only just begun.

When they arrive at the club, Jiyong realizes Seunghyun’s rented out the whole place, and it’s filled to the brim with actors and musicians that Jiyong’s only met a few times. Jiyong doesn’t have a million friends… he’s got a million acquaintances he’s friendly with, though, and it seems like they’re all here last minute.

Youngbae spots Seunghyun over by the stairs, talking to Jaejoong, who looks wasted, and Hyunjoong, whose eyes are drooping, but would pretty much go anywhere that Seunghyun asked him to because they’re tight like that.

Hands clap onto his shoulders as he starts to walk over, and it startles him, because as clingy as Jiyong is, Jiyong likes to initiate touch.

“Hyung, happy birthday!” It’s a familiar voice, and Jiyong turns around to see Hyunseung standing there, still wearing stage makeup. He’d forgotten Hyunseung’s group was on tour right now, but maybe Jiyong should call his manager to get him tickets.

Youngbae nods at Hyunseung and keeps walking, disappearing into the crowd, and Jiyong thinks he might’ve spotted Kush.

“You’re here, too? Just how well-planned was this?”

“You’re just lucky that Little Seunghyun is so well-organized,” Hyunseung says. “He pretty much knew everyone to call, and apparently he delegated all the arrangements like a champ.”

It takes a moment to register that Hyunseung has said Little Seunghyun and not just Seunghyun. “Seungri?”

“Yes, he called me this morning and said that Teddy had mentioned you hadn’t gotten to celebrate your birthday, and so he and Big Seunghyun had thought it might be fun to throw something together.”

“Seungri?” Jiyong says again, and Hyunseung doesn’t seem to see how surprised Jiyong is, maybe thanks to the dim club lights.

“Yeah,” Hyunseung says. “It was weird, because I’d heard you guys don’t really talk anymore; not that you’d said anything, and I never really was good friends with him.”

“Well, I’m glad you could make it,” Jiyong says. “I hope you have a good night tonight.”

Jiyong slips through the crowd, toward Seunghyun. “You lied to me, hyung,” Jiyong says, squinting at his band mate.

“About which thing?” Seunghyun says, and he’s really drunk. “I prefer to think of it as ‘misleading’.”

“Seungri planned this?”

“Seungri and I did it together, only Seungri is efficient and organized and I just drink from bottles of champagne and tell mildly entertaining jokes.”

“How long have you been drinking?”

“It was five o’clock in Australia,” Seunghyun replies, and Jiyong rolls his eyes and surveys the crowd. “Youngbae says your wife left you. Maybe you should go have a drink, too.”

“How many people has he told?” Jiyong frowns, because he’d not particularly wanted this to get around until after he was done with promotions. “And don’t shout!”

“Just me,” Seunghyun says. “Because I’d asked him why I couldn’t get a-hold of her.” He squints at Jiyong. “And how else are you supposed to hear me over the music?”

“She’s in Japan,” Jiyong says, and then he gives up on holding Seunghyun’s attention, as one of his actor friends walks over and engages him in conversation.

It’s kind of nice not to be the only famous person in the club. He finally spots Daesung, who’s dancing playfully with Hyori, a bright smile on both of their faces because they’re old friends. Daesung’s going to sing for her wedding next month, and Jiyong’s looking forward to the occasion, even if it’s only two weeks before Se7en’s. Jiyong wonders how it’ll feel, attending two weddings newly divorced.

But those are not birthday thoughts, and Jiyong’s here to celebrate. He makes his way to the bar, smiling at the bartender, who recognizes him as the birthday boy and immediately pours him a shot.

Jiyong takes it, liking the way it burns going down.

Seungri planned all this. He’d wondered how everything had come together so well. Of course their unofficial manager had been behind it.

“Having fun?” Seungri leans on the counter next to him, gesturing for his own shot, and the bartender brings two.

“I am,” Jiyong says. “I hear I have you to thank.”

“Wow, who gave me up?” Seungri asks, not looking at Jiyong. Their shots come, and neither of them drink.

“Hyunseung,” Jiyong says. “I think he thought I knew.”

“Ah,” Seungri says. “You’re not… mad, are you?”

“Of course not,” Jiyong says. “I’m just… I’m sort of shocked you’d go through this much effort for me. I kind of…”

“What?” Seungri asks, and Seungri’s cheeks are glowing, from alcohol already consumed, maybe.

“I kind of thought you hated me.”

“Oh,” Seungri says. “No.” He taps his fingers against the bar, and Jiyong notices that he’s wearing an expensive watch. Jiyong likes it, even though it looks too old for him. “I don’t know how to hate you, even when you’re so selfish and cruel I don’t know how to be around you any more.”

“So all the time, then,” Jiyong says, and Seungri laughs, and looks over at him, finally meeting his eyes.

“Not all the time, hyung.” Seungri smiles, just a bit. “Maybe just 75 percent.”

“I’ll take it,” Jiyong says, and there’s a fluttering in his chest that’s a little like hope. There’s been precious little of that in Jiyong’s life lately, so he doesn’t recognize it.

“I wish we were still friends,” Seungri says, and it’s Jiyong’s turn to look away. It feels like they’re all alone, despite the booming bass and the shrieking laughter.

“You want to be friends with me, even knowing…”

“Yes,” Seungri says, so quickly Jiyong almost gives himself whiplash looking back at the younger man. “Yes. At least… At least I’ll have that.”

“Okay,” Jiyong says, because even though he knows, for Seungri’s sake, that he should say no, Seungri has always made Jiyong a little bit rash. A little out of control.

“You can’t leave me at waffle shops,” Seungri says, and he picks up his shot between his first finger and his thumb. “I had to eat that whole waffle by myself, and you know I can’t say no to dessert. Hwangssabu was going to kill me.”

Jiyong picks up his shot too.

“To friendship?” Seungri looks at Jiyong like he thinks Jiyong is going to suddenly deny everything, or like he can’t believe he’s really offering.

Jiyong can’t believe it either. “To friendship,” he says, and they drink.

 

 

 

**YOU PUSH AND YOU PULL**

 

 

The ALIVE tour has them traveling from place to place, until Jiyong forgets where he is, where he was yesterday, and what language the people around him are speaking. One thing that is familiar is Seungri, doing push-ups in the center of the floor of his hotel room, back glistening with sweat.

“Ah, hyung,” Seungri says, and he stops, standing up. Jiyong admires the play of muscles beneath skin. “I didn’t know you’d come in.”

Jiyong approaches slowly, and Seungri probably hears him, but he doesn’t turn around, instead opting to stretch his neck slowly.

Jiyong wraps his arms around Seungri’s waist from behind, and Seungri doesn’t startle. Perhaps he’s used to Jiyong now, and the way Jiyong doesn’t really respect anyone’s personal space. Especially not Seungri’s, because Jiyong thinks all of Seungri’s space is his, just like Seungri is his, whether Seungri likes it or not.

“You’re so clingy.”

“You love me,” Jiyong says, and he presses closer, until he can feel Seungri’s warmth through his t-shirt, and feel Seungri’s bare shoulder blades digging into his chest. Seungri is tall and a little broad. Like an adult instead of a child.

It makes Jiyong nervous, because he doesn’t want Seungri to outgrow Jiyong’s embrace.

“Like me best forever,” Jiyong says, and his words tickle against the back of Seungri’s neck, and Seungri shivers. There’s a faint hit of perspiration, and it makes Jiyong want to pull Seungri closer.

“I don’t want to like you best forever,” Seungri says.

“Why not?” Jiyong teases, resting his head on Seungri’s shoulder. Seungri stares at the wall, but Jiyong can see the strange tilt to his lips. He’s not sure whether Seungri is smiling or frowning.

“Because you give a lot of love,” Seungri says, and there’s a catch in his voice. “But I think you give it just to prove how easily you can take it away.”

In some ways, Jiyong thinks, it’s true. People are complicated and Jiyong wants to be the most complicated of them all.

But Seungri isn’t complicated. Seungri is a humble boy who pretends to be boastful, because he doesn’t want people to think he’s afraid. Seungri is kind. Seungri is transparent and childlike and open. Seungri is simple, and the way Jiyong feels about Seungri can sometimes seem so simple, too.

Jiyong drops one hand from Seungri’s stomach, to tangle his fingers with Seungri’s. Seungri isn’t expecting that, and he blinks, twice, before he relaxes, letting Jiyong fit his fingers between. Seungri doesn’t complain about the way Jiyong’s rings must scratch at his knuckles.

“I will never take all my love away from you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri does a slow burn, the tips of his ears turning red just the way Jiyong likes. Jiyong likes this version of Seungri; the one that hangs on Jiyong’s every unpredictable word. He almost wishes he could use it on variety shows, but this isn’t for other people to see. This is just for Jiyong.

“I wish I could believe you,” Seungri says, and Jiyong presses a kiss to his cheek. “How many chits am I worth if I agree to your mad scheme? What do you win in your weird little game?”

“More than you can possibly imagine.”

“Do you use that line on all of us?”

“You’re mine,” Jiyong says, because Seungri is different. Seungri is more. “And you know how selfish I am with my things.”

“I’m not a thing,” Seungri says, and he tries to pull away, but Jiyong tightens the arm around Seungri’s waist, and Seungri doesn’t put up much of a fight.

“You’re mine,” Jiyong says again. “And I’m not going to let you go.”

“Okay,” Seungri says, and Jiyong hears something strange in Seungri’s voice that he can’t identify.

That’s all right though, because Jiyong can feel Seungri’s heartbeat where their palms meet, and that’s enough understanding for now.

 

 

**GIVES NOTHING AWAY**

 

Jiyong wakes up feeling sick to his stomach and dizzy, sure reminders of a night of heavy drinking, Seungri waving his hand in front of Jiyong’s face.

“Oh good, you’re not dead.”

“Maknae, your concern is touching.”

“I carried you home last night, hyung. I think I’ve shown you a lot of concern.”

“No segway this time?”

“You were _way_ too drunk to operate a motor vehicle.”

“Did Youngbae make it home?”

“You weren’t ready to leave when he left, so I said I’d make sure you didn’t end up in a ditch or on the news.”

“Thanks,” Jiyong croaks, and Seungri hands him painkillers and a glass of water.

“I made you haejangguk,” Seungri says. “A little ‘hangover soup’ and you’ll be all right, hyung.”

Jiyong doesn’t remember anything that happened after one in the morning. “I didn’t do anything too stupid, did I?”

“Nothing you have to tell your wife about,” Seungri says, and his tongue trips over the word ‘wife’ like a part of him still can’t believe he has to say it. “Don’t worry.”

_”To friendship,”_ Seungri had said, last night. Jiyong had lost Seungri the last time with partial truths and selfishness.

Jiyong can’t believe, after two years of silence, Seungri is speaking to him at all, let alone willing to be anything more than just coworkers.

“I don’t have a wife,” Jiyong says, and closes his eyes, preferring not to see Seungri’s face.

“Pretty sure I went to that wedding,” Seungri says. “Pretty sure I made myself put on a suit and smile in pictures and be a fucking _groomsman_ in that wedding, hyung.”

“You did,” Jiyong says. “You didn’t speak to me the whole day, but you smiled in the pictures.”

“I’m a professional,” Seungri says, quoting Jiyong's favorite catchphrase.

“My wife is in Japan,” Jiyong says. “She’s doing a shoot there. She’s in love, there.”

“And not with you?” Seungri asks.

“She’s never been in love with me.” Jiyong opens his eyes, and the light is still too bright. Seungri has a nice flat, with big windows and simple white curtains and furniture. “Your place looks like a music video set.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Seungri says. “I won’t let you do that to  me anymore. Tell me only half of what I need to know.”

“You _need_ to know?” Jiyong says. “We don’t talk for two years, and all of a sudden you want to know about my life?”

“You didn’t try to talk to me, either,” Seungri says. “Not once. You didn’t even send me a letter.”

Seventeen pages Seungri would have wished he’d never received, if Jiyong had sent them.

Jiyong sits up and rubs at his face. He comes away with eyeliner and mascara on his fingers. He probably looks terrible, and his stomach is rolling.

“Maybe I should go,” Jiyong says, and he stands. He stumbles as he tries to straighten, and Seungri catches him, hands landing on Jiyong’s waist as Jiyong battles sudden dizziness.

“We don’t have to talk yet,” Seungri says. “Just sit down, and let me feed you.”

“No,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s hands burn. “Don’t _touch_ me.”

Seungri lets go, and looks at Jiyong like a kicked stray. “Okay,” Seungri says, and Jiyong wraps his arms around himself. He’s in Seungri’s bedroom, and he’s still a little tangled in the sheets. Those are white too. Everything is white; bright, bright white and Jiyong’s too dark to be here.

“I have to go,” Jiyong says, and he walks past Seungri, out into the living room. He sees his things in a pile by the door, and makes sure one of them is his wallet. It’s there, along with his phone. He slips into his shoes; his favorite ones, white with gold studs all over them, and fumbles with the fancy, complicated locks.

“Hyung-“ Seungri says, and Jiyong doesn’t know why he’s freaking out, when it’s Seungri who should be freaking out, but his heart is pounding painfully against his ribs and he’s going to throw up.

Seungri looks confused, and angry, and a little scared, and his hands are jammed into the pockets of pajama pants that fit all too well, and Jiyong can see the muscles of Seungri’s thighs and-

“I’m sorry,” Jiyong says, and then he’s out the door. He half expects Seungri to follow him, but he doesn’t, and the muggy air outside isn’t any more welcome than Jiyong had expected it to be. He still can’t breathe.

Jiyong knows this neighborhood. Seungri had told him before, about the great property values. He wonders if Seungri owns the whole building. It’s something Seungri would do.

Jiyong feels inexplicably hysterical.

He catches a cab, and leans against the backseat with his eyes closed, and tries not to move.

Youngbae knocks on his door about four minutes after he gets home. “Are you _ever_ going to call before you come over?”

“Don’t hold out hope,” Youngbae says. “Now, be a good leader and call maknae and apologize.”

“He called you?” Jiyong still feels nauseous, and guilty, and lost.

“No,” Youngbae corrects, and he finally takes a good look at Jiyong over the top of his sunglasses, smiling cheerfully like Jiyong isn’t a train wreck. “I called him to check on you. And apparently you freaked out about something you’ve never talked about before, probably because you’ve been trying to deal with it on your own without involving anyone else because you still, after all these years, think you’ll owe us if you depend on us, and you don’t want to owe anyone anything.”

Jiyong just stares at Youngbae, and Youngbae shrugs. “At least, that’s how I explained it to maknae. Was I right?”

Jiyong doesn’t respond, just walks into the kitchen and fills himself a glass of water.

“Don’t feel too bad, Jiyong.” Youngbae reaches into the cabinet and grabs his own glass, before filling it from the water tank. “I’ve had sixteen years to figure you halfway out.”

“Only halfway?”

“Not like you’re too interested in sharing the rest of it,” Youngbae says. “But you should call and apologize to the kid that practically carried you back to his place last night. Took care of you while you were sick for six hours.”

The sour taste in Jiyong’s mouth. That’s what that is. Vomit.

“Shit,” Jiyong says, and he shakily runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t call him.”

“Do you not have his number?” Youngbae asks, pulling out his mobile. “I can give it to you.”

“I don’t want to call him.”

“Yes you do,” Youngbae says. “You’re just scared he won’t answer.” He scratches at his neck. “Or scared he will.”

Jiyong’s not sure which is more true, but he doesn’t pick up his phone.

 

 

**PULL**

 

Jiyong loses Seungri in Vegas, and when he finds him again, he doesn’t let him out of his sight.

Vegas is full of bright lights, but none are as bright as Seungri, whose eyes sparkle in a way that makes Jiyong feel so alive.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

‘Shut the Door’ comes on the radio as Jiyong prepares for bed.

Jiyong turns the radio off, but he hears it still, echoing in his head, and that night, he dreams of adolescence, and Seungri, one warm hand slipping under Jiyong’s t-shirt to hug him close in the night.

When he wakes up, there is only Tom and Laura, and Jiyong’s cold bed, Gaho warming his feet at the end of it.

 

 

 

**YOU GIVE AND YOU TAKE**

 

 

Seungri’s got a girlfriend in Japan. He shows up at the Hyundai card press conference for MONSTER with barely hidden hickeys, and Jiyong spends the entirety of the conference trying to swallow back the bile. It isn’t until they get back to the dorms that Jiyong cracks, anger seeping out in a way that has Daesung and Youngbae fleeing for their rooms, and Seunghyun obliviously disappearing to play with his toys after snagging a popsicle that’s totally against his diet from the fridge.

“What’s wrong with you?” Seungri asks. “You won’t look at me. And you’re so angry.”

Jiyong frowns and crosses his arms, eyes narrowing. “You know what’s wrong with me.”

“I wasn’t late.”

“Your neck,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s right hand flies up to the mark that sneaks out of his collar. “Couldn’t even cover it with makeup.”

“I didn’t mean-“

“Disgusting,” Jiyong says, and he looks down, at Seungri’s clunky shoes, and his frown grows deeper.

“What’s disgusting? You know I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, is she an official girlfriend now?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri rolls his eyes.

“She has been for a while, hyung.” He pulls out his phone, and Jiyong really hates that.

“Don’t pull out your phone when I’m talking to you, maknae.” Rage and something else are clawing their way up Jiyong’s chest and sinking their claws into his heart.

“But I need to answer a text.”

“From her.”

“Yes.”

“What if I tell you not to see her anymore?” Jiyong steps closer, and Seungri looks up from his phone in surprise.

“Hyung?” A faint pink blush suffuses Seungri’s cheeks, and yes, Jiyong at least still has that power. Seungri visibly tenses, and Jiyong drags his thumb across the mark on the neck.

Someone else has marked his maknae. It’s _disgusting_ , and Jiyong is surprised his hands aren’t shaking.

“What- What are you doing?” Seungri asks, and his voice seems like it’s trapped in his throat. Seungri is loud, but right now he’s quiet, like he’s holding his breath. Jiyong’s thumb dips down beneath the collar of Seungri’s shirt, feeling the bruised skin, and Seungri shivers. Jiyong rubs at the spot like he can rub it away and make it disappear, but he can’t, and that leaves a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.

Suddenly, Seungri’s phone beeps, and it makes Jiyong so _angry_ to see Seungri look down at it, and Jiyong hisses, snatching the phone from Seungri’s hand and throwing it on the ground. The screen breaks with an awful crunch. “That’s my phone!”

“You’re mine,” Jiyong says. “And you can fuck her but you can’t ignore me. You can’t put anyone before me.”

“You can’t just _say_ things like that!” Seungri squats down and picks up his phone, cradling it in his hand for a moment before he looks up at Jiyong helplessly. “You can’t just… say I’m yours and then only pay attention to me when you feel like it, and ignore me the rest of the time!” Seungri runs his hand through his hair. It’s too short now to stick up all over the place like it used to. “I can’t… I don’t know what to think, when you do that.”

“I’m not ignoring you now,” Jiyong says, and reaches out so he can cup Seungri’s cheek. Seungri leans into the touch.

“It’s not fair,” Seungri says. “I don’t know all the rules.” Seungri sighs. “So you get to do random men in club bathrooms and I don’t get to have a girlfriend?”

“You don’t need to know any rules,” Jiyong says, because Seungri looks so resigned and gentle, on his knees in front of Jiyong. “You’re mine. That’s the only rule.”

“You don’t make any sense,” Seungri says. “I just want you to like me. What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Jiyong says, but as he says it, he thinks of a thousand, a million, an infinite number of things he wants from Seungri, and thinks the answer might be everything.

Jiyong has always thought of Seungri as his.

“It hurts,” Seungri says, and he reaches up and presses a hand to his chest, right above his heart. “Everything you do hurts so much.”

“That’s the kind of person I am,” Jiyong says, and Seungri looks up at him with those pretty eyes, and the shadows under them seem so very dark.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

“Flat number,” Jiyong says, when Seungri answers the phone.

“What?” Seungri says, and he doesn’t ask who’s calling. Jiyong guesses that the other people Seungri talks to waste time on conversation fillers and pleasantries. But Jiyong’s got two heavy bags, and no time for that. Politeness is something he values, but Seungri is not a stranger.

“I can’t remember which flat is yours, and thus I cannot knock on the door,” Jiyong says impatiently. “And I’m not calling Seunghyun to ask, because he’s probably asleep, and Youngbae will make smug noises into the phone and Daesung didn’t answer, so. I’m calling you.”

“I was your last resort to figure out my flat number?” Seungri says dryly, and Jiyong frowns.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Jiyong says. “You always find it harder to tell me no when you’re flustered.”

“818,” Seungri says quietly, and Jiyong presses eight on the elevator.

Seungri’s made a half-hearted attempt to clean himself up, hair freshly brushed and skin dewy like he’d quickly washed it in the sink. He’s still wearing his sleeping clothes, dark burgundy silk against the white backdrop of his flat.

Stunning in its simplicity. Jiyong wishes he could take credit for teaching him interior design, but Jiyong’s decorating tends toward the garish.

“I brought waffles,” Jiyong says. “The way you like them. And I promise not to run away.”

“Okay,” Seungri says. “Wine?”

Jiyong frowns. “It’s maybe better if I…”

“Right,” Seungri says. “Come in, sorry.”

Seungri’s carpet is soft beneath his bare feet.

Jiyong stands in the center of Seungri’s living room as Seungri retrieves napkins and forks, and when Seungri returns, lips pursed in contemplation as he thinks about how he wants to arrange things, Jiyong speaks.

“My wife married me because she thought she couldn’t have who she really wanted. She hoped to forget him with me.”

Seungri pauses, and then keeps moving, just silently letting Jiyong talk. That’s changed, too, because Seungri, before, would have peppered him with questions. Jiyong appreciates the quiet, but he misses Seungri’s voice.

Seungri clears off the small table by the sofa, taking the magazines and stacking them by the side of the couch before dragging the table out. He sets the forks down on it, and then looks up at Jiyong.

“Then it turned out she could, so she’s left me.”

“Without warning?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong shakes his head.

“No. It’s fine. I married her for the same reason.”

“That’s a terrible reason to get married,” Seungri says, and he takes the two bags from Jiyong’s hands, unpacking them.

“Shut up,” Jiyong says. “It made sense at the time. I’d begun to feel… unhinged.”

“You were,” Seungri says. “You were so crazy you even wanted me-“ Seungri coughs. “I don’t want to talk about that. Never mind.”

Jiyong sits where Seungri gestures. “I came here to tell you that. Because you had asked. I should have answered. A friend should answer.”

“I’m still in disbelief that you’re here right now,” Seungri says. “I keep thinking, that by disappearing, you’d forget all about me and find… someone else to be your Jerry.”

“I will never take all my love away from you,” Jiyong says. “You’re not like everyone else.”

If Seungri were like everyone else, Jiyong never would have played. Tom always loses, in Tom and Jerry episodes. Jiyong hates to lose.

“You’ve said that before,” Seungri says. “I have never believed you.”

“I don’t really expect you to,” Jiyong says, and the syrup on the waffles is too sweet. Sweet like Seungri’s voice.

“If I put you first, you’ll use it against me.”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “I will.”

 

 

 

**AND HE NEVER SPEAKS HIS HEART**

 

 

Jiyong has always been good at everything except loving. Jiyong can write hit songs, dance, rap, sing, and get dressed in the dark while completely stoned and still start a trend in airport fashion. Jiyong can climb mountains and run pretty fast and cook and clean and pretend to be nice, and all sorts of other important life skills, but Jiyong doesn’t know how to love.

When Jiyong loves, it’s always too much; the kind of love that eats him up inside and leaves him feeling empty and ready to be filled with new emotions. It’s like a roller coaster; that adrenaline rush of love where everything feels fresh and interesting and inspiring, and Jiyong lives for that thrill because it coalesces inside of him in the form of half-discovered poetry and melody. And Jiyong can’t control it. Instead he just rides it into terrifying obsession, until he suddenly can’t sleep or eat or concentrate on anything that is not that love. Jiyong finds himself digging the name of his love into wood with his bitten down fingernails until they bleed, and the blood stains the letters and it’s beautiful, because love, Jiyong thinks, should bleed, at least a little.

Seungri’s name is stained red on his bedroom floor, underneath his bed where no one has ever seen, not even his wife.

It’s been there for two years, since Jiyong bought the house.

When Jiyong loves, it’s always too intensely, a brightly burning flame that consumes all the kindling and then the whole forest before it goes out, so quickly that Jiyong is always so surprised when it’s gone, leaving nothing but ash and the memory of green flora in it’s wake. And he’s alone again, the poetry and melody having found a melancholy completion.

Jiyong loves, often and without reservation, and it is fierce, but the objects of it always leave. They always leave him because Jiyong is frightening when he is in love, and Jiyong can understand, when he steps out of himself, that no one can really be expected to stand up to the weight of it all.

Jiyong never regrets it, even when he’s been dumped for the hundredth time and left feeling just as empty as he’d started. Jiyong never regrets the way he loves, because the way he loves is just as important to his creative process as the way he hates and the way he takes. Regrets are useless unless you can do something about it, so Jiyong doesn’t waste his time.

Well, he almost never regrets it.

The one time he regrets, it is because of the way he traces the bow of Seungri’s upper lip as he sleeps, head pillowed on Jiyong’s lap. His hair is soft and wavy, and tomorrow Jiyong is going to take him to get it cut off, and then they’ll pierce his ear and make him look all grown up for their comeback.

The one time he regrets, it is because of the way Seungri’s mouth feels soft beneath Jiyong’s fingers, lush in a way that defies expectation. There are tiny lines forming around Seungri’s mouth, from laughter, Jiyong thinks, and they’re just as pretty as the rest of him.

The one time he regrets, it is because he knows that Seungri will wake up, and flush at the way he’s lying, like he’s Jiyong’s girlfriend, splayed across Jiyong’s lap, and then he will move away, and Jiyong won’t stop him. Seungri’ll sputter and apologize and Jiyong will pretend he doesn’t care one way or the other because it’s better that way.

Jiyong’s always been so very afraid that Seungri will leave, so Jiyong doesn’t love him, just in case it will help keep him close.

It doesn’t.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Seungri tries to sit next to Jiyong on the plane, but Jiyong feels cruel, and sits next to Daesung, laughing loud enough for Seungri to hear, and turning away enough to exclude him.

Seungri is right about one thing. Jiyong will always, _always_ use it against him, because the wounded look in Seungri’s eyes is Jiyong’s way of proving to himself that he matters.

Jiyong has always been selfish and greedy.

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

“I’m so glad you guys are getting along again,” Daesung says, and Jiyong doesn’t ask him for clarification.

“Me too,” Jiyong says. He’s seen Seungri twice this week, and only once was it to perform. The other time, Seungri’d simply asked Jiyong to go out with him to pick out a suit, and Jiyong had gone without much fuss. Seungri always likes to pick out suits that make him look like chairman of the board, and Jiyong thinks it’s a shame.

Seungri’s been in the military the past couple of years, and his shoulders are broader. But Seungri still shivers a little when Jiyong brushes the imaginary flecks of dust from the lapels, and it sends a trill through Jiyong’s chest, like a tiny, fluttering bird’s early morning song. “Me too.”

Daesung frowns down at his tea. “You’ve always liked Seungri the most,” Daesung says.

“It’s not like that-“ Jiyong starts to say.

“Or differently, maybe,” Daesung corrects smoothly. “And he’s always been the same about you.”

Jiyong stirs his coffee.

“It’s like you were missing a bit of yourself, the past while.” Daesung smiles, and Jiyong can’t see his eyes. “But it’s back now.”

“Daesungie…”

“When you were a kid, hyung, did you ever collect caterpillars?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “I kept them in glass pickled mushroom jars and poked holes too small to escape from, in the top of them, through the aluminum lid.”

“For how long did you keep them?” Daesung asks, and Jiyong winces.

“Until they made cocoons. I always meant to open the jars, then, so when they burst free they could fly away, but I was always afraid I’d wake up in the morning and they’d be gone.” Jiyong takes a sip of his coffee. “So I never unscrewed the lid. Then I’d have all the dead butterflies at the bottom of the jar.”

Daesung hums thoughtfully, and adds a little more sugar to his tea. “A lot of kids did that,” Daesung says. “My sister did it once, the first time she’d captured a caterpillar.”

“I still do it,” Jiyong says. “Except now I do it with people.”

“My sister let the second butterfly go,” Daesung says. “And for the next three weeks, maybe four, it came every morning to the flowers my mother grew on the kitchen windowsill, because it’d seen those flowers every day.”

“People don’t do that,” Jiyong says. The coffee is too bitter. Seunghyun might like his coffee black, but Jiyong likes things that are a little more milky.

“Seungri does,” Daesung says. “Seungri always has.”

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

It’s year’s end, and Seoul is covered in a blanket of white.

Jiyong is exhausted down to his bones, but it’s not over yet… the ALIVE tour will continue into the new year, and the 2013 BIGSHOW rehearsals will start soon after that.

Jiyong just wants to breathe.

Still, he’s grateful to still be so wanted. After last year, when they weren’t even sure they’d still be together… it’s amazing to still have it all. From those tentative steps through London, to that triumphant global victory at the EMAs… BIGBANG was not a band that could be kept down.

Seungri comes home, loudly, and Gaho barks and barks. “Shhhh, puppy,” Seungri says. “Jiyong-hyung must be sleeping.”

“I’m not,” Jiyong yells out into the hallway. “And if I had been, the sound of you slamming the door would have woken me up way before my dog.”

“Sorry,” Seungri calls back lightly, in a way that sounds like he’s not very sorry at all. Seungri is known for his half-assed apologies, so Jiyong doesn’t really care.

Seungri continues through the dorm, making a racket that has Jiyong smiling more than frowning, and he rolls onto his back as Seungri opens his bedroom door.

“Hey,” Seungri says, and now Jiyong can smell ladies’ perfume.

It’s nothing like what Seungri wears. Seungri’s girlfriend in Japan is long gone, but Jiyong supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Seungri’s found someone else, even if it’s only for sex.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Jiyong says, and the words are like acid in his mouth. “Didn’t come home last night.”

“I was. Busy,” Seungri says, and the atmosphere feels thick and awkward when Jiyong doesn’t immediately answer. Seungri fills the silence, like he always does, with nervous chatter, and he ventures further into Jiyong’s room, finally settling next to him on the bed. “What did you do?”

“Worked,” Jiyong says. “I had a lot to do for Bean Pole.” Jiyong frowns. “We were supposed to get dinner.”

“Ah,” Seungri says, and his weight shifts, and Jiyong feels Seungri’s thigh warm against his side. It’s sickening, the way Jiyong’s stomach lurches. He wants to reach out and touch Seungri. “Something came up.”

“I see,” Jiyong says.

“We’ll spend tonight together instead.” Seungri phrases it like a question, maybe because he isn’t sure if Jiyong will want to, but Jiyong is greedy, and he’ll keep every piece of Seungri that he can.

Jiyong always wants to reach out and touch Seungri, but Jiyong knows if he does, he might not be able to stop touching. It’s already thin enough ice.

They’d never talked about the argument before. Back when Jiyong had broken Seungri’s phone.

Jiyong just gets so angry at the idea of other people touching what’s his.

“You smell like a whore,” Jiyong says, and turns away from Seungri. “Get out of my room.” Jiyong turns away, curling into himself. Seungri flinches, and Jiyong feels only a little guilt, but it’s buried in… what he’s pretty sure is jealousy, or possessiveness, or whatever it is that echoes in Jiyong’s head _’mine mine mine’_ whenever Seungri looks away.

“I’ll go take a shower,” Seungri says, and when Jiyong doesn’t respond, Seungri rises from the bed. Jiyong misses him immediately, and resists the urge to grab onto Seungri and pull him into a hug.

They’re getting too old for that now, and Jiyong is hyperaware of the way Seungri is constantly shifting away from those touches these days. Besides, Seungri smells like a woman Jiyong will never meet, and Jiyong knows he can’t stand it because Seungri should be his.

Jiyong sits up when he hears the water start, and rubs at his eyes. They’re probably red, but it’s nothing Jiyong can help. He can’t sleep now; not with the nervous energy thrumming through his veins. Not when Jiyong needs to make sure that Seungri still fits into his side as perfectly as he always has.

He wanders into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water, and it wakes him up a little. It clears the fog, anyway, and it’s easy to go out to the living room to sit on the sofa and wait.

The water stops, and Seungri isn’t humming like he usually does, making so much noise that Jiyong can hear it through the closed bathroom door.

Maybe Jiyong drifts off, but the next time he opens his eyes, Seungri is standing behind him, hands on Jiyong’s shoulders, thumbs pressing right where the muscles are tightest.

“Your hands are wet,” Jiyong says irately, voice cracking with sleep, and then he blinks twice because he’s not wearing nice clothes, so it doesn’t matter. “Sorry, I’m just tired.”

“Yeah,” Seungri says. “I know. I’m worried about you.” Seungri laughs, but it’s a tremulous one, unsure. “I thought your door would be locked when I got out of the shower.”

“Why?” Jiyong says, and Seungri doesn’t answer, because they both know Jiyong is often irrational when it comes to Seungri. Jiyong can’t help himself.

“You need to rest more.”

“I need to do my job even more than that,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s hands drop from his shoulders. “Maybe I would have slept if I hadn’t waited for you.”

“You waited for me?” Seungri is too far away.

“It was snowing last night. It was dangerous on the roads.”

“I was careful,” Seungri says, and Jiyong reaches blindly behind him for Seungri’s hands, because he misses the weight of them. He wants to remind himself that even though Seungri’s been out with a girl, now he’s clean, fresh out of the shower, and home with Jiyong, and Jiyong doesn’t have to admit that other people have touched what belongs to him.

He wants Seungri to smell like him. “Come back.”

“My hands are wet, remember?” Seungri’s voice is a little anxious, and Jiyong finally snags Seungri’s wrist, and he rubs his thumb along the bone he finds there. Seungri inhales sharply, and wrenches his hand out of Jiyong’s grasp. “Let me go get dressed, hyung. I’ll come back out in a minute.”

Jiyong’s so exhausted. He wants Seungri nearer. “If you come back out in a minute, I might be asleep, so just stay.”

“If you’re asleep when I come back out, I’ll wait for you to wake up,” Seungri says. “Should I order food?”

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “Enough food that I can take a picture of it and send it to Seunghyun with a bitchy message about how I’m going to eat all of it and not get fat at all.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Seungri says, and his voice still sounds odd. Jiyong wonders if he’s missing something, because there’s a lilt there, in his tone, that Jiyong can pick out because he knows Seungri’s voice so intimately. “I’m going to go get dressed.”

Jiyong stands up, slowly, joints creaking like he’s old, and Seungri doesn’t move as Jiyong walks around the sofa. His vision is a bit blurry, and maybe his eyes are too dry, but Seungri is in perfect clarity, looking at him measuredly, like one looks at a predatory animal. “Wait,” Jiyong says.

“Maybe you should get some sleep, hyung.” Seungri presses his lips into a line for a moment as he considers. “I’ll wake you up in two hours, okay?” He takes a half-step back, and self-consciously tightens his towel, retucking the edge to keep it from sliding down.

He moves his hands as he speaks, and all it does is make Jiyong pay attention to he shift of muscles in his arms, and the thin layer of puppy fat that disappears and reappears in turns as the season changes.

Seungri is beautiful in the day’s fading light. Jiyong’s throat is dry. The water is back over on the table. Jiyong’s not sure it would help.

Seungri is so beautiful, and Jiyong’s chest hurts.

Jiyong’s just delirious enough; just tired enough and just _crazy_ enough that as he looks at Seungri, standing there with his towel around his waist and that strange look in his eyes, he snaps.

He doesn’t know what comes over him, really, only that he’s so _done_ with pretending to be mature, when really he’s a child who likes taking the things he wants, and he wants Seungri so bad the pain of it cuts into him like a knife.

The water dripping down Seungri’s bare chest and lingering in the hollows of his clavicles is a temptation Jiyong can’t resist. He realizes he’s pinned Seungri to the wall, one of his larger hands holding Seungri’s wrists above his head while the other presses flat against Seungri’s abs, after he’s already leaning down to taste.

Seungri’s skin tastes sweet and fresh, exactly as Seungri should taste, and Seungri is trembling against Jiyong’s mouth as Jiyong drags his tongue across Seungri’s collarbone, Seungri’s abs clenching and unclenching beneath Jiyong’s hand as Jiyong holds steady.

Seungri whimpers when Jiyong nips at the skin, and Jiyong soothes the tiny wounds with gentle kisses, and now his own hands are starting to shake, and he can feel the terrycloth of Seungri’s towel through the thin fabric of his jeans.

“No,” Seungri whispers, and Jiyong hears him, he really does, but Seungri tastes so lovely and Seungri isn’t pushing him away. The thing is, Seungri’s ‘no’ sounds so very much like a yes, desire threaded through it and reaching out and grabbing Jiyong, pulling him in closer, and when Seungri throws his head back, Jiyong bites down on the exposed skin of his neck.

Seungri’s exhale is heavy, turning into a whine as he starts to struggle, and Jiyong lets him go, letting Seungri shove him back. He looks at him, and his cheeks are flushed, and it extends all the way down to his chest. He’s looking at Jiyong with wild, confused eyes, and Jiyong licks his lips. He can taste Seungri’s skin.

He wants to taste Seungri’s mouth. “No,” Seungri says again, but it’s weak, and Jiyong moves forward again, trapping Seungri between himself and the wall, and takes what he wants.

Seungri’s lips give more than Jiyong would have expected, but it’s perfect. It’s kind of like the rush Jiyong feels the first time he listens to a finished song, singing in his blood better than any drugs. Kissing Seungri is kissing Victory, after all, and Jiyong is triumphant when Seungri falls open beneath him, blooming like a flower in the morning dew of spring.

When Jiyong dips inside that mouth, leaning up and tilting his head to the side to taste more, touch more, Seungri mewls and leans down cautiously, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Jiyong knows Seungri has kissed before, done more than kiss before, but maybe he’s never kissed anyone like Jiyong, who is so very greedy and selfish and likes to own, and that’s fine, because now this little piece of Seungri’s innocence belongs to him. Jiyong eases his tongue along the inside of the smooth row of Seungri’s teeth, and then their tongues are tangling together. Jiyong scratches his nails down Seungri’s chest, and Seungri’s tiny noises just make Jiyong want to throw him down and take him right here in the living room, on the heated _ondol_ floor.

But then Seungri is pushing him back, hard, and Jiyong stumbles, this time, and Seungri is panting and his eyes looks scared, now, not just confused.

“Why?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri’s hands clench into fists. Jiyong loves the image he makes, cock half hard underneath the towel, Jiyong’s marks all over his chest and neck, marring that milky skin. But Seungri’s face… there’s something Jiyong doesn’t like there. Something that looks like a ‘no’ that Seungri means. A ‘no’ that Jiyong can’t ignore.

“I don’t want to play,” Seungri says. “This will just be used against me later, and I don’t want to play.”

“Play?” Jiyong asks, and he knows exactly what Seungri means, but this isn’t… for Jiyong, this isn’t like that. Jiyong isn’t kissing Seungri to give himself leverage. He’s kissing Seungri because he can’t deny himself anymore. Because it’s all he’s able to think about sometimes, when Seungri is a little to close and Jiyong wants to push him a little bit farther.

Seungri gives Jiyong meters and Jiyong takes kilometers, and Seungri never denies him.

Except now, Seungri has wrapped his arms around himself, and it’s almost as if he’s curling into himself. “What does this cost?” Seungri asks. “What does one kiss cost?” He leans against the wall for support, and he’s still trembling. “Will you fuck a girl in front of me now to prove you don’t want me? To prove that I want you?” Seungri is almost hyperventilating.

Jiyong frowns, and runs his hand through his hair. “Maknae.”

“No,” Seungri says. “Leave me alone. Leave me be.” Seungri shudders. “Stop hurting me. Find someone else to torment.”

Jiyong doesn’t want to do that. Jiyong wants to press maknae back against the wall and kiss the words right out of him. Jiyong doesn’t understand how his control became so weak, sanity slipping through his fingers as he watches the man in front of him, a newly minted twenty-two year-old, look at him through ash-dark lashes, shoulders still slick from the bath. He doesn’t understand, but Seungri is consuming him.

“You have no idea what torment is,” Jiyong says, and his voice is raspy, and it hurts. When did his throat get so dry?

“Yes, I do,” Seungri says, and his lips look plump and swollen, and then he’s gone and Jiyong is left standing there with his hand inexplicably pressed to his chest.

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Jiyong dreams of a Seungri who is only the length of his thumb, not as tiny as a caterpillar but with those sweet eyes and even sweeter smile; drowsy and lovely.

Jiyong, in the dream, puts him in a glass jar, and Seungri pounds with his tiny hands and screams and screams and Jiyong doesn’t have to let him go.

Jiyong refuses to let him go.

He wakes up in a cold sweat, and his hands tremble, fisted in the sheets, and he’s hard, straining against his briefs, muscles in his thighs tight as well-tuned guitar strings.

“I’m so fucked up,” he whispers at the ceiling, and Jiyong knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep.

 

 

 

**IT’S TOO LATE NOW, TO STOP**

 

 

Jiyong always falls out of love as quickly as he falls in love.

But not with Seungri.

Seungri is an obsession that Jiyong will never let go. Jiyong writes songs like ‘Shut the Door’ and millions of people download it, but Jiyong can’t put the feeling that fills him down into easily processed words, because even Jiyong is not that good at what he does.

Jiyong knows better, but he can’t help himself.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

“Where are we going?” Seungri asks. “We’re leaving Seoul.” He’s sitting perfectly straight in his seat, and the gray of the seatbelt matches the gray of his shirt.

His face is still painted in stage make-up. They’re finished with the music video for ‘Shut the Door’, which replaced Jiyong’s original choice for second single with its sheer popularity.

Jiyong can live with that, especially since it means Seungri is sitting next to Jiyong in Jiyong’s car, fussing with Jiyong’s radio and trying to find the pop station instead of the hip hop station Jiyong’s been listening to lately.

“I live outside of Seoul,” Jiyong says.

“Oh,” Seungri says. “I always wondered what your house looked like.”

Gaho greets Seungri so enthusiastically that Seungri falls to his knees, protecting his face from Gaho’s tongue, and rubbing one hand across the dog’s wrinkled sides. “Been a few years, hasn’t it boy?”

Seungri steps inside, and he looks up with a little awe at the high ceilings. “A bit big for one person,” Seungri says, and Jiyong frowns.

“It was meant for two,” Jiyong says, and Seungri laughs nervously.

“I keep forgetting,” Seungri says. “I’m sorry.”

“Forgetting that I’m married, or forgetting that I’m getting divorced,” Jiyong asks.

“Not sure,” Seungri says. “I guess I just…” He coughs. “Nevermind.”

“Maknae.”

“I guess I just blocked the whole thing out,” Seungri says. “Because. Well. You know why.”

“People make mistakes,” Jiyong says, and he can’t really apologize, because Jiyong doesn’t really do that, at least not to people he knows. “People lose…control.”

“We all do,” Seungri says. “Make mistakes, I mean.”

“You’re welcome to look around,” Jiyong says, and he heads to the kitchen to get energy drinks for them, because in four hours they’ll both be heading out for a music show, and they’ve been up all night. They should both be asleep right now, but Jiyong had offered, and Seungri had accepted, and maybe they’ll watch TV, or something else they don’t usually have the chance to do.

After he retrieves the beverages, he finds Seungri in his room, sitting on the edge of the bed. He’s got his hand on Laura’s calf.

“You pervert,” Jiyong says, and Seungri laughs.

“This brings back memories,” Seungri says. “What did your wife think about Tom and Laura?”

“I took them out of storage when she left for Japan,” Jiyong says. “I don’t like sleeping alone.”

Jiyong sits next to Seungri on the bed. “I don’t like it either,” Seungri says, and he lies back on the bed, snagging a pillow.

“You’ve always been good at making yourself at home in my space,” Jiyong says dryly, and he lies down too, on his side, propping his head up on his hand, elbow sinking into his mattress.

“It’s part of my charm,” Seungri says, and his eyes flutter.

“Are you going to fall asleep?”

“Yes,” Seungri says. “Tom and Laura are singing me lullabies.”

Gaho pads into the room, and licks at Jiyong’s toes, and looking at Seungri’s drowsy face makes Jiyong feel sleepy too. “We have to get up in three hours,” Jiyong says.

“Okay,” Seungri replies, and then he’s gone, mouth slightly parted, slow breaths that are almost snores escaping his mouth. His eyeliner is still thick. It’s going to smudge on the comforter if he turns.

When Jiyong wakes up to his phone alarm, Seungri has rolled onto his side, and one of his hands has found the flat of Jiyong’s stomach. It’s hot through Jiyong’s tank top.

_Mine, mine, mine,_ Jiyong’s heart whispers, and he doesn’t want to wake Seungri up.

“Time to go?” Seungri whispers, and Jiyong can’t admit it, but it’s the best he’s slept in weeks.

“Yeah,” Jiyong says, and Seungri moves, and Jiyong misses the warmth of his hand.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Nikon gives Jiyong a camera, and he takes hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Most of them are of Seungri, and he keeps them in a drawer, with that seventeen page letter he’ll never send.

 

 

 

**NEVER NEVER NEVER MAKE NO SENSE**

 

 

Jiyong marries a woman he doesn’t love because she hurts him in all the right ways, and because he knows he can never have what he truly wants. Besides, it’s not as if Jiyong has ever expected to truly be happy: Jiyong is someone who can be an asshole; who creates best when he’s miserable. Being an artist has always meant more to him than being content.

Jiyong knows it isn’t fair to either of them, but at least they’re both using each other. Jiyong tries not to think about the thickness of Seungri’s fingers when he holds her slim hand, and he tries not to remember Seungri’s high pitched giggles when she laughs in that husky chuckle.

Kiko isn’t Seungri. They couldn’t be more different. Seungri is fire and Kiko is ice, standoffish and cool and impulsive where Seungri was warm and soft and patient.

Kiko’s got a way of slipping under Jiyong’s skin and leaving tiny cuts where he can’t see, and sometimes Jiyong is singing or writing or recording a demo and he stumbles across them, and they burn and burn and he’s not sure if they ever really heal. They’re barely noticeable, anyway, compared to the gaping wounds Jiyong’s already got that ooze and fester when Jiyong closes his eyes.

They meet again when Jiyong is twenty-four, and Jiyong already feels like he’s lost Seungri even though an outsider would think Seungri was still there. Jiyong can feel the difference in every glance.

It’s at a party his friend Diplo throws in Japan that they run into each other. Jiyong hasn’t seen her for more than brief greetings in a few years, and hasn’t thought of her in depth in at least that many; barely registering her face on magazines as he walked past newsstands in the streets. He’d said hello to her when she went to a BIGBANG concert, back in 2012, but it’s a year later, and he’s seeing her alone now, face to face.

“It’s been awhile,” she says, and the way she talks, with that exaggerated drawl to her Korean that speaks of disuse, hasn’t changed a bit. As she takes a sip of her mixed drink, her lipstick leaves a mark on the foggy glass, and yes, Jiyong remembers, fondly, the way those thick, full lips feel skating down his chest, and the way they look when she smiles playfully around his cock.

“It has,” Jiyong agrees, and he turns toward her, his own glass of whisky clinking against the metal of his bracelets that hang low on his wrist. He likes the way her eyelids shimmer silver in the light.

“I really fucking hated you,” Kiko says, and Jiyong smirks.

“I wrote a song about how much I hated you,” Jiyong says, and he takes a drink and watches her over the rim of the glass. “Heart-heart-heart-heartbreaker.”

“Bullshit.” Kiko snorts, and she’s talking loud enough that Jiyong can hear her over the bass, pumping loud as Diplo spins at the DJ stand. Jiyong can see Youngbae up there with him, dancing and hyping the crowd, wearing sunglasses inside, even though he’s told Jiyong he can’t see when he wears them. “I would have needed to have your heart to break it,” she says, and her nails are fake, and they’re painted silver too, and Jiyong wonders if she’s just come from a shoot or something. “I never had your heart.”

“What do you know about it, Mizuhara?” Jiyong licks his lips. They taste like his whiskey.

“I know you’ve always been in love with someone else, Kwon Jiyong. I think we both know that.”

It’s true, but Jiyong really hadn’t known at the time. He’d been confused, and balancing at the edge of a cliff then, one foot firmly on the ground while the other foot stepped out onto nothing, and trying not to fall. Jiyong remembers his aching heart, and remembers how lost he’d been.

So it’s true, but hearing it from her leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. “Not like you loved me, either.”

“That’s true,” she says, and she fingers her locket. Jiyong wonders who gave it to her. She’s always worn it. “But I liked you a lot. Still do. I don’t know why. You’re kind of a bitch.”

“Birds of a feather,” Jiyong says, and they clink glasses, and Jiyong likes the look in her eyes, like she can give as good as she gets, the same way he liked it the first time he ever met her.

Somehow, he ends up fucking her at her new flat, her hands clasped to the bars of her austere, hipster, iron headboard as sweat pearls on his back, and her fake nails leave rivets in his skin as she screams, head thrown back and hair matted to her forehead with perspiration. Her neck is exposed, and as Jiyong slides in and out of her, slick and smooth and still a little too rough, he fights the urge to lean down and bite until she bleeds. When she comes, clenching around him in a way that’s familiar and intoxicating, she calls out a name that isn’t his, and it stings, but the name on the tip of Jiyong’s tongue isn’t hers either, and she knows it, so perhaps it’s only fair. After, she lights a cigarette and they share it, getting ash on the sheets and neither of them giving a fuck. Kiko’s pretty hands look good holding a cigarette, Jiyong thinks, and he likes the way she looks in profile; the gentle slope of her small breasts, locket hanging between them, and the long column of her throat. Her mouth; that beautiful mouth that looks nothing like Seungri’s mouth at all, puckers gorgeously around the fag, and she hasn’t really changed at all.

Maybe that’s a good thing, Jiyong thinks, because Jiyong hasn’t changed much either, except that he’s grown more stubborn and more lonely and more selfish, but he’s always been a lot those things, so maybe the difference is negligible.

“We should do this again,” Kiko says, and Jiyong lifts his hand and runs it through her chin-length hair, letting his hand rest on her cheek. He can’t read anything in her eyes except mild amusement, and _oh yes_ , Jiyong remembers how good Kiko is at not caring at all.

“We should,” Jiyong replies, and they do, and somehow Jiyong finds himself doing it again and again, fucking Kiko and pointedly not thinking about Lee Seunghyun and getting caught by the paparazzi leaving Kiko’s place at four in the morning because he wants to shower at his hotel with his own body wash, and avoiding Youngbae’s phone calls.

They don’t have a normal romance, because they live in two different countries and they’re busy people, but it works. Maybe it’s because Jiyong’s heart is already taken, and so he’s less crazy and obsessive, or maybe it’s because Kiko’s quirks are all familiar, but they fit together in a way that’s surprisingly comfortable, because Kiko doesn’t expect more than Jiyong is willing to give, and because Kiko already knows Jiyong is an inherently flawed person and he doesn’t have to waste energy pretending to be someone loveable when he’s not.

Jiyong also doesn’t feel like he’s caught in this inescapable tide, being rushed against his will toward the jagged rocks on the shoreline.

Jiyong feels completely in control. Not like when Seungri had told him no.

“Are you going to marry her?” Seungri asks him, on his twenty-fifth birthday, and Jiyong looks at Seungri out of the corner of his eye as he leans back on the couch.

It’s just them this year—Youngbae is promoting a song with Psy, and he’s in Busan tonight, and who knows where the hell Seunghyun is—he might still show up, late as hell and wearing a long-sleeved polo even though it’s August like he’s afraid the sun is going to give him leprosy. Daesung is sick. He’d called Jiyong this morning, sounding stuffed up and miserable, to wish him a happy birthday, and Jiyong had wished him a speedy recovery in return. So it’s just Jiyong and Seungri, sitting on Jiyong’s sofa, two feet of space between them that never would have existed five years ago, watching some dull TVN program about people who foster dogs or something, and it’s Jiyong’s birthday. Jiyong’s twenty-fifth birthday.

Seungri’s lips look dark in the dim light of Jiyong’s living room, like raspberries, and Jiyong swallows around the sudden dryness of his throat.

Jiyong thinks Seungri looks sad, but his heart has played tricks on him before, and he knows better than to assume things about Seungri anymore. “Do you think I should?” Jiyong asks, making sure to keep his tone light.

He expects Seungri to ask him questions, like ‘do you love her?’ or ‘are you seriously thinking about it, hyung?’, but Seungri doesn’t. Instead he leans back on the sofa and closes his eyes, tilting his chin up in a way that casts a shadow against his jaw.

Seungri grew up pretty, Jiyong thinks, not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

“Yes,” Seungri says, after a moment that feels impossibly long, and Jiyong’s pulse is too fast so he clenches his hands into fists and makes it slow down through sheer force of will.

“Why?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri’s tongue peeks out and wets his lips, and Jiyong wonders why the room feels so hot. Seungri’s hands are locked together in his lap, and Jiyong can see the bracelet he gave him almost three years ago now, twice broken and twice repaired, thick on Seungri’s wrist, the only jewelry he’s wearing today. Seungri opens his eyes, and turns to look at Jiyong, and there are shadows there that Jiyong’s never noticed.

Jiyong wonders if he put them there.

“Because then I’d be able to-“ Seungri starts, and then his eyes widen a fraction, and his knuckles go white, and Jiyong can see the muscles in his arms tighten, golden skin stretching over hard-won biceps.

“Able to…” Jiyong says, but it’s more of a question. Jiyong’s rings feel heavy. And they clink together as he moves, turning to face Seungri straight on. “You know I hate it when people don’t finish their sentences.”

“Stop worrying about you!” Seungri says, and he laughs, and it’s too loud in the quiet. It’s jarring, and forced, and not at all like Seungri’s really laugh, which is obnoxious and terrible and one of Jiyong’s greatest treasures; a noise he hoards and replays in his mind sometimes when no one else is around. “Maybe then I’d be able to stop worrying about you.”

Jiyong doesn’t respond, at first. He just sits there and stares at Seungri, whose eyes are closed, a wide phony smile stretching across his face like he’s a clown, and Jiyong wants to slap him, or scratch at his face until he makes an expression that’s real.

None of that matters though, not really. It doesn’t matter that Jiyong has watched Seungri sleep and counted his eyelashes (and there are 127 on the upper lid of his left eye, except when there are 124 or 133) or that Jiyong sometimes imagines wrapping a collar around Seungri’s throat so that the whole world knows whom he belongs to. It doesn’t matter because it’s all inside Jiyong’s head, and Jiyong’s dating Kiko, and Seungri is something that Jiyong wants and can’t have, because being an artist has always meant more than anything else, and because Seungri has said no.

“I will,” Jiyong says finally. “I’ll probably marry her.” And Seungri flinches, and that ugly smile gets a little bit larger, and this, _this_ is real heartbreak, right here on Jiyong’s couch on his twenty-fifth birthday: looking at the one thing Jiyong’s always wanted the most and watching it slip through his fingers like so much water.

And Seungri pulls himself up, back straight, and pulls the cake towards them, and Jiyong reaches forward to take the knife, and the backs of their hands brush, and it’s a jolt, like electricity, and Seungri pulls back like he’s been burned. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and Jiyong remembers Seungri curling up against him, head tucked beneath Jiyong’s chin, breath steady against Jiyong’s neck as Seungri slipped into slumber. Remembers, and it’s like poison, because now they barely touch at all.

Jiyong misses Seungri’s warmth.

“I hope you’ll be happy,” Seungri says thickly, and Jiyong doesn’t want any cake, because his stomach’s twisted itself into knots.

Jiyong can’t be happy, because Jiyong wants to straddle Seungri and kiss him until neither of them remember how to breathe without each other; wants to fuck Seungri until he screams and screams Jiyong’s name in that voice Jiyong loves. Wants to see Seungri look up at him with a fevered gaze and a need, just one step further than Jiyong has seen in his face before.

He remembers the taste of Seungri’s mouth, like candy and coffee and liquor, and the way Seungri hadn’t known what to do, letting Jiyong teach him.

Jiyong wishes that he could forget.

He asks Kiko to marry him on a Tuesday. It’s not a special day, or a special place, because Kiko has seen all of Jiyong’s ‘events’ and is incredibly uninterested in them. So they just go out for coffee and Jiyong asks her if she’d like to marry him.

“Are you sure?” Kiko asks steadily, and Jiyong thinks about the way the icing of his birthday cake had lingered at the corner of Seungri’s mouth, and the way he had wanted to lick it off. Then he thinks about the way Seungri had moved away from Jiyong, every time Jiyong had ventured closer. The way he’d felt helpless and out of control as Seungri said ‘no’ with every shift of his thighs and sigh and furrow of his brow.

Jiyong feels in control right now, pulse beating at a steady pace and world right side up. He’s thinking about deadlines and projects, and yes, this can work. Jiyong is an artist, first, and maybe he can finally close the door on his heart.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and Kiko smiles; this little, smug smile that Jiyong likes a lot, because it makes Kiko look like she has all the answers and sometimes Jiyong likes to take a break from pretending that _he_ has all the answers.

“Alright then, Kwon Jiyong,” Kiko says. “But you’d better not write any sad songs about me.”

“They won’t be about you,” Jiyong says, and Kiko nods, and looks down at her necklace, that heart-shaped locket that Jiyong almost imagines is a part of her. Maybe she has doors she wants to close, too.

That night, as he kisses his way down her flat belly, tongue delving into her navel before venturing lower, Kiko starts to cry.

“Let’s forget together,” she says, and she’s holding that locket in a tight fist as her other hand clutches at the bed sheets, and Jiyong understands her completely.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and his bracelet, the one whose twin is in Korea on another wrist that’s thicker than his, feels like the heaviest thing Jiyong has ever worn.

That night, he writes ‘Shut the Door’.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“What are you working on?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong looks up. It’s Seunghyun and Seungri in the door, Seunghyun wearing his thick-frame glasses and looking kind of like he just stepped out of a drama, and Seungri wearing his workout clothes.

“New songs for BIGBANG’s comeback album,” Jiyong says. “This one’s going to be a dance track.”

He plays a bit for them, and Seunghyun starts freestyling to it, and Seungri laughs. “It’s no ‘Shut the Door’,” Seungri says, as Seunghyun walks over and starts messing with the track. Jiyong lets him, because you need a password to save changes to anything on his computer, and Seunghyun has tried for almost a year to guess his password, and he’s never managed.

“No, no, of course not,” Jiyong says. “That song speaks from me, but not from _us_.”

“That makes sense,” Seungri says, and Jiyong nods.

“This beat is great,” Seunghyun says. “So there’s this one, and the one from Boys Noize, right?”

“And two others,” Jiyong says. “I’ve had a while, and there are some tricks up my sleeve, still.” Jiyong smiles at Seungri. “And not too many sad songs, maknae.”

“I love ‘Shut the Door’,” Seungri says. “Even though it’s sad, it feels real.” He scratches at his cheek. “It’s sort of the opposite of the last song we did as a duet, isn’t it?”

Jiyong swallows.

“Like, on my mini-album, we did ‘Open the Window’. Isn’t that a coincidence?” Seungri is studying the ground, and Jiyong thinks Seungri knows it isn’t.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and turns away, looking over at where Seunghyun is still replaying bits of the song, trying to get a feel for where his rap goes, and the kind of flow it needs to have. Seunghyun looks back, raising a single eyebrow, and Jiyong knows from that single glance Seunghyun’s been listening to their conversation.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Seungri says. “I’ll come back to pick up the kid when I’m done.”

“Can we go out for cake?” Seunghyun asks, and Seungri taps his chin.

“Only if you don’t fall asleep in it,” Seungri says. “Youngbae and Daesung are still recovering from their heart attacks.”

“I was really drunk,” Seunghyun says. “And that was _years_ ago. There should be a law that the things BIGBANG members do when they’re really drunk and it’s only them in a room, should stay secret and undiscussed forever.”

“I veto,” Seungri says. “What else am I going to talk about on talk shows? I have to earn the sheer amount of throwing me under the bus Jiyong-hyung does.”

“You’ve earned it a lot,” Seunghyun argues, but Seungri is already out the door, leaving Jiyong and Seunghyun alone in the studio.

“Do you guys always say so many words without saying anything to each other, or is that just special because I’m here?”

“What are you talking about?” Jiyong taps his fingers to the beat, bobbing his head and trying not to replay the conversation in his head.

“You’re both so dumb,” Seunghyun says. “Both of you just staring at each other like there’s so much you want to say, and saying nothing at all.”

“Hyung.”

“I guess I’m glad you’re talking to each other at all, though,” Seunghyun says. “I was beginning to feel like I was going to have to act my age to solve the problem. Especially since Daesung wasn’t being the mature one for me.”

“I think we’re friends again,” Jiyong says quietly. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Good,” Seunghyun says. “I mean, in the long run, I’m still probably going to ditch you guys when you go out for dinner, but at least I can ditch you all at the same time instead of on separate occasions. It was hard to bail out twice on my short vacations during service, let me tell you.”

Seunghyun chuckles to himself, and Jiyong thinks it’s pretty ridiculous that Seunghyun looks handsome doing that weird little laugh to himself, but he does. “One day Youngbae is going to get a gold metal, and then what are you going to do?”

“Have dinner with him,” Seunghyun says. “I like people who have won gold metals.”

“I like Seungri,” Jiyong says, as a test, and Seunghyun snorts.

“I could have told you that ten years ago, Jiyongie.” Seunghyun replays Jiyong’s song again. “So could any of us, except for Seungri.”

Jiyong wonders what the expression is on his face. “Oh,” he says.

“Anyway,” Seunghyun says. “Can you please not do anything crazy that has the maknae re-enlisting? If necessary, I’ll come over and throw away your shoebox of hair cuttings and whatever other creepy shit you’ve collected.”

“I hate you,” Jiyong says.

“No you don’t,” Seunghyun replies. “Cause I’ve got a sweet rap to fit that empty bit before the hook.”

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Kush and Seunghyun plan Jiyong’s bachelor party, (even though Youngbae is Jiyong’s best man), which Jiyong knows is a bad idea, because Seunghyun is still mentally ten years old and Kush is a total pervert. Jiyong knows at best, he’ll have strippers wearing thongs made out of action figures, dessert foods, and silly-string, and at worst he’ll be arrested, but Jiyong doesn’t really want to argue because it’s not really a Korean tradition to have a bachelor party, anyway, so no one else would plan it instead. Teddy and Se7en _probably_ won’t let him get arrested, too, so he thinks it’ll be alright.

It winds up being rather tame; just good drinks and good friends, and all of BIGBANG is together again in one room for the first time in almost six months.

“This feels nostalgic,” Youngbae says, and he takes a small sip of his beer, nursing it so he doesn’t have to get another. “All of us together celebrating something, not just working.”

“It does,” Seungri says, and then he hiccups. His face is flushed, and Jiyong’s noticed he’s been drinking heavily, at twice Jiyong’s pace, for most of the night, leaning against Seunghyun’s side as Seunghyun looks down at him amusedly. “We’re never together anymore.”

“We’re busy,” Daesung says. “Spread out and on completely different schedules. It makes sense we’d have trouble matching five schedules together.”

“Yeah,” Youngbae says. “But still. Nostalgic. And now our Jiyong is getting married.”

Seungri takes another shot, and Daesung frowns at him. “Seungri, are you alright?”

“Fine,” Seungri says, and Seunghyun wraps an arm around him. Seunghyun looks drunk too, red cheeks and carefree smile.

“I’ll take care of maknae.” Seungri smiles up at him, and jealousy bubbles in Jiyong’s stomach. They look comfortable together. Seungri won’t let Jiyong even touch him, but he’s half in Seunghyun’s lap.

Jiyong’s going to be sick.

“I wanna dance, dance, dance, dance,” Seungri whines, and Seunghyun chuckles, pulling Seungri up and out onto the dance floor.

“Oh, I feel old, now,” Youngbae says. “Let’s go.”

And they follow, and Seungri is dancing too close to Seunghyun and Jiyong hates it, hate it, hates it. Jiyong had kissed Seungri, and Jiyong had proposed to his girlfriend, and Seungri feels so far away that Jiyong’s slowly losing his mind.

He moves close to Seungri, wrapping his arms around Seungri’s waist from behind, and Seungri grinds back into him, and Jiyong’s fury abates, and Seungri is drunk and knows exactly who Jiyong is but he doesn’t move away. Seunghyun is laughing at him, and Youngbae thinks it’s funny, snapping pictures on his camera phone as Seunghyun turns his attention to Daesung, hopping onto Daesung’s back. Kush has just poured a drink on Teddy, but Jiyong barely notices, because Seungri smells like liquor, and Jiyong is slowly becoming more and more intoxicated.

The song ends and Seungri pulls himself free, mumbling about going to the bathroom. He doesn’t meet Jiyong’s eyes, and Jiyong follows him.

“Are you running from me?”

“Yes,” Seungri admits. Another hiccup. “I’m drunk and I’m thinking bad things.”

“Bad things?” Jiyong asks, and this is _wrong_ , because Jiyong is getting married tomorrow, and Seungri has said ‘no’ so clearly that Jiyong should know better than to move any closer. Still, he does.

“Stop it,” Seungri says. “Don’t come any closer to me.”

“I want to,” Jiyong says. “I’m selfish and it’s my party and I want to.”

“Does it matter what I want? I want to go out there and dance with TOP-hyung and laugh at his stupid dance moves and forget the way I feel, just for tonight.”

“I don’t want that,” Jiyong admits, and the alcohol he did drink is sloshing around in his belly, mixing with all the other feelings he can’t quite pinpoint.

“I do. I really, really do.” Seungri hiccups, and it’s almost a sob. “You win. Whatever’s happening, you _win_. I know you hate to lose, so I surrender, and-“ His tongue is tripping over the words, slurring them, and Jiyong’s half sure that Seungri doesn’t even know what he’s saying. “I am-“

“Maknae is mine,” Jiyong growls, shoving Seungri against the wall of the club, pressing them together chest to chest, Jiyong’s thigh slipping between Seungri’s as they share air. “Mine.”

Seungri’s breathing is harsh, and his eyes are closed, and his mouth looks ripe, and Jiyong want to-

“No,” Seungri says. “It can’t be this way.”

“I don’t want anyone else to touch you,” Jiyong says, voice low, and the helplessness and jealousy bubble and froth in his belly.

“You’re getting married,” Seungri says. “Can’t you- Can’t you stop playing this game with me, even now? What are you even winning anymore? Can’t you see that I’m _done_? I’ve been done since you kissed me, last year in December, and…”

“Maknae,” Jiyong says, and Seungri takes both hands and pushes at Jiyong’s shoulders. Jiyong stumbles backwards, not expecting the strength, and Seungri looks at him, and Seungri’s eyes are wild, and there’s something lost and sad in his eyes that makes Jiyong want to scream.

“You’re such a bastard. You know I-“ and Seungri takes a deep, shivering breath. “I would have done anything to be… You told me once, that I couldn’t be most important to you. That I shouldn’t take our interactions so seriously, or I’d lose. But then you- You do these things, and I want… I want… I hate this game, hyung. I hate it. It’s terrible. I feel like I lost years ago, and you’re only rubbing it in.” Seungri wraps his arms around himself, and it makes him look so young; more like the boy Jiyong had found crying in his room when he’d thought no one was home. More like the boy that just wanted Jiyong’s attention, any way he could get it. “It’s like you thrive on tearing me apart and putting me back together wrong. It’s like you _like_ making me think that you might actually-“ He bites his lip and Jiyong just stares at him, watching Seungri slowly straighten himself up and uncurl his back. Jiyong remembers the way those muscles feel beneath his fingers. “Go. Get married. Let me go.”

“Let you go?”

“Please,” Seungri whispers. “Please let me go.”

Jiyong tries to ignore the way his heart shatters, but it’s so loud he thinks it’s a miracle Seungri can’t hear it.

Seungri leaves, rushing out and forgetting his coat, and Jiyong gets so fucking drunk he’s surprised he makes it to his own wedding.

 

**PULL**

 

 

Jiyong does an interview with Yu Jaeseok, appearing on his new television show first because Yu Jaeseok is almost like an old friend, someone who never turned his back on Jiyong, even at the peak of his scandals. Never being too rough, or trying to set Jiyong up. It’s rare in Korean reporting, and Jiyong appreciates it, so he does his first appearance post-comeback on a Wednesday night SBS show.

“So what is it like, back in the spotlight after two relatively quiet years, doing only a few endorsements for GMarket and Bean Pole?”

“Relatively quiet,” Jiyong says with a laugh. “I’ve been writing a lot, for BIGBANG’s comeback, and my own solo album.”

“It’s been dominating the charts.”

“I’m very blessed,” Jiyong says.

“Did the other members of BIGBANG like your solo effort?”

“They all did, I think,” Jiyong says. “I know TOP-hyung liked it… I catch him humming 'Hungry' to himself sometimes.”

“For me, the best track was your duet with little Seungri.”

“He’s not so little anymore,” Jiyong says. “But that track is also close to my heart.”

“It’s a very sad song,” Yu Jaeseok says, and Jiyong nods.

“I wrote it two years ago,” Jiyong says. “More than that, even.”

“But you were in the middle of dating your wife, Ms. Mizuhara, at the time, am I correct? The wedding that shocked the world. From just friends in 2009 to married.”

“My heart was broken before I married Ms. Mizuhara,” Jiyong says, and doesn’t mention that it still is. “I’d fallen in love with someone I could never have. Someone that knew how terrible I can be and didn’t want me because of it.”

“I suppose we all have had our heart broken at least once,” Yu Jaeseok says, and Jiyong smiles grimly.

“It’s a part of the human experience,” Jiyong says. “I only like to write about the human experience.”

Yu Jaeseok looks at him consideringly, like he’s thinking about making a joke, but he doesn’t.

It’s a sign of respect, and it makes Jiyong feel warm. Jiyong has always been greedy for that sort of treatment.

“The only one of your band mates that you worked with on your solo album this time is Seungri. He’s fresh out of the military right?”

“I missed him the most,” Jiyong says. “Maybe that’s why his voice sounded so good to me.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” Jiyong shakes his head a little, laughing.

“My maknae has always been the most precious,” Jiyong says. “There’s a brightness to his soul that I always want to keep close to me.”

“A brightness?”

“Seungri is a source of inspiration,” Jiyong says, and he could go on and on about teasing apart the wicked threads of need and obsession that wrap around Seungri’s name inside Jiyong’s head, but he knows no one will understand it. “For my music.”

He wonders if Seungri is watching.

While a part of him hopes his is, the rest of him prays he isn’t.

Because Jiyong’s music means everything, and Jiyong’s not sure if Seungri knows how big a part of it he is.

 

 

 

**WHILE YOU’RE FADING**

 

 

Seungri attends Jiyong’s wedding, but not the reception. Jiyong looks for him there, but doesn’t find him, and then Yang Hyun Suk catches him and spends twenty minutes telling Jiyong that he’s still kind of pissed off that Jiyong is getting married all of a sudden but he hopes he does well with it, and then Jiyong’s swept up by what feels like a thousand people earnestly wishing him and Kiko happiness, and Jiyong just mumbles ‘thank you’ back at them.

When he dances with Kiko, she smiles at him, and her full lips quirk up just a bit at the corners, and that locket looks lovely with her gown.

A few weeks after the wedding, Seungri enlists. Jiyong finds out from the news.

Jiyong thinks about writing him hundreds of letters, maybe thousands of letters, about everything from the music he’s writing to what he thinks about the freckles on Seungri’s back, to all the things he misses about Seungri, but he only actually writes the one. It’s too long, and doesn’t say _mine mine mine mine mine_ , which is really all Jiyong thinks about, all the time.

Seungri thinks Jiyong was playing a game, but Jiyong was simply falling in love the only way he knew how, and Seungri had paid the price.

Jiyong wonders, as he thinks about Seungri, the youngest of them all, but the first to serve his country, if this is Seungri’s way of _making_ him let go.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“I really, really missed you.” Seungri is lying on the carpet in his apartment. “I don’t know what that says about me, that I missed you so much.”

“What do you mean?” Jiyong is lying on his belly on the sofa, looking down at Seungri. Seungri’s arms are folded behind his head, and his eyes are closed. Jiyong is sure he can feel the weight of Jiyong’s gaze, because the muscles are taut.

“I’m waiting for you to hurt me, but I’m still here. Like I think it’s worth it.”

“Is it?” Jiyong asks, and he looks out those big glass windows to the street below. People look like ants, small enough that Jiyong could step on them all and not even notice.

“Yes,” Seungri says. “But I don’t know why.”

Jiyong licks his lips.

“I don’t know what that says about me.”

It’s says, to Jiyong, that Seungri is _his_ , but Seungri doesn’t want to be, so Jiyong will make music. Jiyong will make so much music, because Jiyong has never expected to be happy.

“I’m glad we’re friends again,” Seungri says, and Jiyong thinks he is too, but it’s a split feeling, because being friends with Seungri, like this, is like a thirst Jiyong can’t quench; he keeps drinking and drinking but there’s a part of him that is woefully unsatisfied and aching for just a bit more.

And deep in his heart, where no one can see, Seungri will be the butterfly that Jiyong has never let go, suffocating in the glass jar of Jiyong’s love.

The butterfly that Jiyong _can’t_ let go.

 

 

 

**STRUGGLE WITH THE KNOT**

 

 

Jiyong is the sum of a bunch of ugly parts all shoved behind a shimmering, sparkling veneer. Jiyong is just like his teeth—overlaid in porcelain to hide the crooked, displeasing gaps and uneven ends that no one wants to see; not even Jiyong.

Jiyong shines and shines and shines and people like that shine; they like the fragments that Jiyong lets them see; calculated glimpses of his rough edges. He spins a web like a spider and everyone gets trapped in it, and they don’t even notice because they’re too busy looking at all the flashy stuff that doesn’t mean anything at all, just the way Jiyong likes it.

The thing is, Jiyong’s not ashamed of how ugly he is inside, because it’s the ugly bits that make him human, and it’s the ugly bits that make him an artist. It’s all the obsession and jealousy and anger and despair and arrogance that make him feel eternally raw, and it’s that rawness that allows Jiyong to pen the lyrics that have made him famous.

When it’s all too much, Jiyong hides away in his ugly, letting it consume him; eat him up from the inside until he’s nothing but volatile rage.

That’s when Jiyong does his best work.

No one can put up with him when he’s like that but Seungri, who patiently took all of Jiyong’s abuse with those wide, injured eyes and waited for Jiyong to love him again; waited for Jiyong to slither back out of the depths of his darkest emotions and beckon him closer.

And when it was done, and there was another album track written that would never see radio play because it was too strange, too scary, and Jiyong was ready to face the world and ready to face pretending to be normal, Seungri was there, palms outstretched like he was looking for a hug, forgiveness etched into his every action, and Jiyong grasped onto that like a lifeline and pulled himself to sanity with the long rope of Seungri’s smile.

It’s the same rope that Jiyong sometimes feels like he's using to hang himself.

Because the problem was, _is_ , that Seungri is in the dark parts of Jiyong, too. There’s Seungri all mixed up in Jiyong’s ugliness because Jiyong’s ugliness is filled with all the things he’ll never allow himself to say and never allow himself to act on outside of a song; not anymore. Jiyong has almost mastered his control now, even though Seungri, with his soft eyes and pretty smiles, is constantly threatening to shred it to pieces. Seungri is the part of Jiyong’s ugly that Jiyong can never forget, and can never keep from escaping out of him when he least expects it.

Jiyong realizes that, now, when he sees someone touch Seungri’s arm on TV like they know him, and Jiyong wants to peel those fingers off one by one because no one will ever know Seungri like Jiyong knows Seungri. Jiyong realizes that, now, when the sickening ooze of jealously climbs it’s way up and out of Jiyong’s throat, obstructing air and logic and everything else, and Jiyong wants to take back so many things, but his pride won’t even let him offer a straight explanation.

Because the problem is, years have passed, and Jiyong still wants to carve his name into Seungri’s back with his nails until it scars, and time and distance has never made that feeling go away. Jiyong can tuck it behind his mask, and rebuild a friendship with Seungri, but he can’t make it go away, and he’s not sure he wants to, because it’s so much a part of that Jiyong doesn’t remember who he is without it.

Seungri stood in that recording booth and recorded Jiyong’s song, his sweet, high voice caressing Jiyong’s words, and it all came rushing back in an instant, and Jiyong almost choked on it; is still choking on it every time he hears the song, and every time they perform it.

Jiyong is so happy to hear Seungri’s voice again. To see Seungri again, but he’s rapidly discovering that it isn’t nearly enough, because Seungri is everything Jiyong’s ever wanted, and Seungri is smart enough to know that Jiyong isn’t what’s best for anyone, because Jiyong doesn’t care if Seungri suffocates in that jar as long as Seungri stays his.

He tells himself it’s all right, because the unhappier Jiyong is, the better his music. Jiyong’s misery, Jiyong’s _ugly_ , is the fuel of his art, same as it’s always been, and Jiyong will tease through it alone, when the novelty of a Seungri who likes him again wears off, and Jiyong feels ready to grapple with just how much he has always wanted, how much he still wants, Seungri to stay.

Jiyong has told himself he doesn’t need anyone, but he’d almost needed Seungri, once. _Almost_.

Now he tells himself he doesn’t. He just aches, and wants and denies.

Jiyong wishes regret, now that he's finally drinking of it, didn’t taste quite so bitter.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

Seungri looks damn good in a suit, Jiyong thinks. The model he’s with is taller than him, but Seungri doesn’t look small next to her—maybe it’s just because Jiyong knows his personality is larger than life, but Seungri doesn’t fade away in her wake.

“What are you staring at?” Youngbae asks, and Jiyong almost drops his champagne flute.

“Nothing,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae laughs.

“Since when is maknae ‘nothing’?”

“Then why’d you bother asking?” Jiyong takes a sip of his drink, and swallows quickly, the bubbles tickling his throat as they go down.

“I wanted to see if you’d say ‘nothing’,” Youngbae replies, tucking his thumbs under his suspenders. “Aren’t you going to say hi?”

“I will before I leave,” Jiyong says, and he thinks that might be soon. Han Byul looks radiant, and Se7en-hyung looks so happy as they dance, and Jiyong, strangely, feels like his gut is filled with acid, gurgling and eating away at his insides.

He’s maybe remembering his own wedding. It was much more somber an affair than this, even though Seunghyun and Bom had gotten absolutely wasted and tried to teach half the guests at the reception the Fantastic Baby dance, but neither of them were coordinated enough to do it themselves. Gummy had been amused, at least, and Yang Hyun Suk had looked like he needed another drink.

Jiyong had been thinking about Seungri then, not Kiko. He’s glad she’s happy now. She deserves it.

It’s a wedding. Jiyong should be happy, too. He’d smiled as Han Byul’s ring slid home on her finger, adjusting his corsage as the photographer snapped a picture of the wedding party, and he’s smiling now.

Jiyong’s always been good at smiling. Jiyong has smiled through everything, _everything_ that’s gone wrong or right, and he’ll keep on smiling, even as maknae glances in his direction and doesn’t seem to see him, too taken with the enchanting model on his arm.

Jiyong hates that Seungri’s brought a date, but Jiyong knows he needs to get used to it. Time can’t rewind just because they’re talking again. They’ll never be the same as they were when they were younger. Seungri is never going to look at Jiyong like he’s perfect ever, ever again, and Jiyong’s forever going to want what he can’t have.

“Are you okay?” Youngbae asks, and his voice is low, and Jiyong knows he’s curious, but he won’t ask. Jiyong has always liked that about Youngbae; he seems to intrinsically understand when Jiyong needs his space, and when Jiyong needs quiet instead of loud.

Seungri never understood that. Seungri just took all of Jiyong’s attention whether Jiyong wanted to give it or not. He still does, even though now he’s learned middle-aged man manners and has a bizarre tendency to alternate between being Seungri the maknae and Seungri the businessman.

“Yes,” Jiyong says. “But I think I’ll head home.” Jiyong drains his drink, and leaves the empty flute on a passing server’s tray. “Too much to drink.”

Youngbae kindly doesn’t call him on the fact that he’s had just the one glass, and Jiyong doesn’t bother to make up a more elaborate excuse because he knows he doesn’t have to.

“If you ever want to talk,” Youngbae says. “I’d be willing to listen.” Youngbae sighs. “Even if I think you’re being ridiculous and that your problems could probably be solved by having a frank conversation.”

“Thank you,” Jiyong says, and he means it, because Youngbae is still his best friend, even though most of the time Jiyong doesn’t deserve him.

He slips out while Chaerin is dancing with Seungri. Dara is attempting to throw grapes in Minji’s mouth, and one of them hits Jinu in the back of the head, and he swears, loudly, and Jiyong just… slips out.

The car is quiet, and Jiyong wonders if he’s ever going to be able to look at Seungri and not _want_.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“You’re so strong,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs.

“No, I’m a professional,” Jiyong says. “And I will smile and smile through every dig, every innuendo, and every cutting remark until it _kills_ them that they can’t get a reaction out of me.”

“Like I said,” Seungri says. “You’re strong.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Jiyong says roughly. “Like you want to be like me.”

“But I do,” Seungri says, and Jiyong presses his hand to the teenager’s cheek and enjoys the give of the soft skin beneath his hand. “I just get hurt, over and over again.”

“I get hurt too,” Jiyong says. “Only the way I am also hurts others.” Jiyong smiles, and likes the way Seungri shakes his head ‘no’, looking at Jiyong like Jiyong could _never_ do anything wrong in his eyes. Jiyong drinks it all in, and greedily covets each and every admiring glance, but he doesn’t want Seungri to be like him. “Arrogance only looks good on me.”

Seungri is beautiful because he is so different. “Okay,” Seungri says. “Whatever you want.”

Jiyong wants to never let Seungri go. “I want to breathe.”

“Yeoido park is nice this time of year,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs, and Jiyong stares down at Seungri, and he feels a little strong, after all. At least strong enough to hold Seungri so close he can’t escape.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Kiko’s sitting on the bed when he gets home, surrounded by clothes. “This is creepy,” she says, gesturing at his comforter. “But totally you.”

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Jiyong says. “I would have come home earlier.” Jiyong’s bowtie is undone.

“Why would I want that?” Kiko asks. “I’m trying to pack clothes. I don’t want to argue with you over some of the things actually being yours because we wear all the same shit.”

“I wear a larger size,” Jiyong says. “Also your taste in clothes is awful.”

“No it’s not,” Kiko says. “You like my taste in clothes. You’re a sucker for all that Japanese flannel.” Her red lacquered nails look bright against the whites and beiges of her wardrobe.

“Maybe a little,” Jiyong says, and Kiko smirks at him. “How much are you taking?”

“Not everything,” she says. “Just enough for the next month or so.”

“Okay,” Jiyong says. “Have you talked to your agency?”

“Yes,” Kiko says. “But I told them not to say anything yet, because I know you haven’t talked to yours.”

“I will, on Monday,” Jiyong says, unbuttoning his dress shirt as he talks. He lets it fall to the floor after he untucks it, since he’ll have it dry-cleaned anyway.

Kiko watches him out of the corner of her eye, slowly folding clothes and putting them in the small suitcase. If there are paparazzi, they’ll think she’s taking a business trip, not moving out. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Jiyong says, and he thinks about Seungri’s carefree laugh as he spun Chaerin around on the dance floor, looking graceful and so fucking happy. “I’ve always had… an obsessive personality.”

Kiko sighs, and stands. She walks up to Jiyong and pushes his vibrant hair out of his eyes. “I thought I’d be able to forget with you, Kwon Jiyong. I thought you’d be able to forget with me.”

“But?”

“We’re too similar,” Kiko says, and Jiyong doesn’t move; he just lets her keep running her fingers through his hair. Those red nails are familiar and comforting on his scalp.

“We didn’t clash,” Jiyong says defensively, and Kiko chuckles low in her throat.

“No,” she says. “But neither of us are the forgetting type.” Kiko leans her head to the side, and her hair is silky and thick. “Maybe we shouldn’t have tried.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have,” Jiyong agrees, and he licks his lips and closes his eyes, and there’s Seungri, Seungri, _Seungri_ , and Jiyong’s heart starts beating faster.

Kiko’s hand falls from his hair, and Jiyong opens his eyes. Kiko’s hands are reaching around her neck, unfastening her necklace.

“You keep this for now,” Kiko says, and she grabs Jiyong’s hand and peels the fingers back, dropping her locket into his palm.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“I wished on it, every single day, that my love would become bearable,” Kiko says. “It’s funny that what made it bearable was having it returned.”

Jiyong clenches his hand around the locket. “You should keep this,” Jiyong says, because the necklace is as much a part of Kiko as her lips and her single lifted eyebrow.

“I don’t need it anymore. Maybe it’ll bring you luck.” She walks away from him, back over to the bed. She puts the last two shirts in her suitcase, and zips it up. Gaho mournfully licks her leg. “Bye, boy,” she says, and Gaho gives a tiny whine.

“Thank you,” Jiyong says. “I’ll miss you.”

“Not as much as you missed Seungri,” Kiko says, and she plants a kiss on his cheek, leaving waxy residue on his skin. “Goodbye, Jiyong.”

“Goodbye,” he says back, and Kiko walks out the front door, and out of Jiyong’s life, and Jiyong’s got a locket, and a bunch of memories he still hasn’t been able to forget.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“What do you need?” Jiyong asks, when he answers the phone.

“I was just calling to see how you’re doing,” Seungri says with a laugh. “The rest of the guys are going out for dinner tonight. Are you in?”

“I’m sorry,” Jiyong says. “I hadn’t checked our chat.”

Jiyong hasn’t checked it in a long time. There was no point when Seungri and Seunghyun were in the military. It was easier for Jiyong to just call Daesung and Youngbae and not have to feel those pangs of longing.

“Well, make sure you check it in the future,” Seungri says. “But seriously, are you okay? You sound stressed.”

Jiyong’s wife has all but officially left him now. He’s low on gas in his car, and he’s got a completely full day tomorrow, and probably a completely full night, too.

But Seungri has called him, just to make sure he saw a dinner invitation, and it makes Jiyong feel lighter than he’d like to admit.

“I’m in for dinner,” Jiyong says, and he worries that no matter what, he’s constantly going to want more than Seungri is willing to give.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“Do you care about me, or not?” Seungri asks, the night after Jiyong kisses him in the living room. “What am I to you?”

Jiyong doesn’t look at Seungri. He just keeps smoking his cigarette as he tries to sort out his jumbled thoughts. Tries not to remember the taste of Seungri’s skin and the press of a towel-clad thigh between his own. The look on Seungri’s face.

“You’re my maknae,” Jiyong says, and Seungri makes a frustrated sound.

“That doesn’t tell me anything at all,” Seungri says. “I just want to know if-“ Seungri gulps, loudly, and Jiyong takes another puff of his cigarette, and pretends his hands aren’t shaking. “I just want to know why you did… that.”

“Because I could,” Jiyong says, because to him, it’s obvious. It’s obvious that maknae has always been Jiyong’s, and Jiyong will take everything from him, bit by bit.

Seungri laughs, and the sound rips into Jiyong, because it’s an aching, jaded sound. “Because you _could_ ,” Seungri says. “What kind of move was that, in the game?”

“Winner take all,” Jiyong says, and Seungri stands up.

“I’m done,” Seungri says. “I’m done being played with. That’s not how friendship,” and Seungri stumbles on the word, or maybe chokes on it, because it’s the wrong word, maybe, for what’s between him and Jiyong, “works. That’s not how it works, and it’s not what I want.”

‘What are you saying?” Jiyong asks quietly, and Seungri laughs, but it’s more like he’s crying, and Jiyong hates it so, so much.

“I’m saying ‘no’,” Seungri manages. “I’m saying no. No one ever tells you no, but I’m telling you no. You can’t treat people like this.”

Jiyong wants to drag Seungri down and explain it to him. Explain how when Jiyong sees him, he sees all the things in life that are still innocent and still beautiful. Explain how Seungri is the one thing in his life besides his music that isn’t a survival game, because Seungri is worth too much to play with. Explain that kissing Seungri had been Jiyong showing his weakness, not Jiyong showing his strength.

But the words won’t come; not right now and not like this. The words will come later, when Jiyong drinks two bottles of soju from green plastic bottles and writes the words down in his notebook, and he’ll wish Seungri were lying next to him, reading a stupid self-help book and making those puffing noises he makes when he thinks things are interesting.

The words will come later, but Seungri has already walked away, and Jiyong’s cigarette is nothing but ash.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“I’m getting a divorce,” Jiyong says, and Yang Hyun Suk looks up from his papers.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“A divorce. Kiko is moving back to Japan and I am not going with her.”

“But we’ve just recovered from your wedding,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong winces. “Why are you doing this to me, Jiyong?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t really intending to do it to _you_ ,” Jiyong replies, and he can’t keep the slight sarcasm out of his voice. Yang Hyun Suk glares at him, and Jiyong lowers his eyes in respect. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says again, more clearly.

“How on earth are we going to spin this?”

“I don’t want Kiko dragged through the mud,” Jiyong says clearly. “I’ll take any blame I have to take.”

“Did you cheat on her?”

“No!” Jiyong says, and then he bites the feelings back down again. “No, sir.”

“Get out of my office,” Yang Hyun Suk says. “I have to think.”

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and he leaves, pulling his knit cap down lower on his head and putting on his sunglasses. Jiyong’s not sure what he feels. Maybe a little empty.

The elevator dings, but it’s not his floor.

“What happened to you?”

It’s Seungri. He’s dressed nice, in jeans and a button up, and Jiyong wonders if he’s going on a show or something. “You’re dressed up.”

“TOP-hyung and I had an appearance to talk about being in the military.” Seungri coughs into his hand. “But you look… What happened to you?”

“I just told President Yang about my divorce,” Jiyong says.

“Oh,” Seungri says. “He probably took that about as well as he took your marriage, I assume.”

“Yes,” Jiyong says.

“He yelled at us for hours,” Seungri says. “You’re lucky you weren’t there for that.”

“He yelled at you guys?”

“Oh yes,” Seungri says. “But that’s in the past. Like so many other things.”

Jiyong grunts. He needs to get out and… He doesn’t know. Do something. He feels raw, like all his nerves are on fire.

Seungri puts a hesitant hand on Jiyong’s shoulder, but then the elevator dings on Jiyong’s floor, and Jiyong shrugs his hand off.

It’s Seungri’s floor too, it seems.

Jiyong walks down to the parking garage, and Seungri walks quietly by his side.

“Hyung,” Seungri says, and Jiyong turns to look at him. They’re standing next to Seungri’s car, Jiyong thinks, and he knows it’s Seungri’s car because the license plate is customized to say VIP and none of the rest of them are that campy. “If you ever want to talk…”

“I never want to talk,” Jiyong says, and it’s not true, but Jiyong never lets himself talk. He just sings it and hopes sharing his loneliness with the world is enough to make it abate.

“I know you don’t actually care about anyone, but if you maybe did, just this once,” Seungri says, and then without warning, he’s pulled Jiyong into a hug.

Seungri’s arms are strong, and thick, and they tug Jiyong in too close. Jiyong can feel Seungri’s heartbeat, and smell Seungri’s gentle, masculine cologne. Seungri’s shirt is soft, because Seungri always picks clothes that are soft, and Seungri’s hands are impossibly warm on his back.

Jiyong’s too surprised to react for a moment, but then his hands find Seungri’s waist, and he closes his eyes and ignores the pinch of his sunglasses where Seungri’s shoulder is pushing them awkwardly into the side of his face. He ignores everything, and it’s like Jiyong is going back in time, only this Seungri is a little bigger than the Seungri who lives in Jiyong’s memories. “I’m your friend,” Seungri says. “And you looked sad, so I did what I would do, for any good friend, and-“

Jiyong wants to crush his mouth to Seungri’s until he’s eaten all the words Seungri has to say, and all that’s left is for Seungri’s tongue to tangle with his own. Jiyong wants that more than anything right now, and he can’t even see straight.

And once again, Jiyong’s control is slipping, right out of his hands.

He shoves Seungri away so hard Seungri stumbles and falls to his ass on the asphalt. “Go away now,” Jiyong says, through clenched teeth, and Seungri’s surprised eyes narrow with anger.

“You’re doing it again,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s burning, turning into nothing as he longs to reach out and take. “Playing your stupid little game. Pulling me close and then pushing me away when I start to trust you.”

“What are you even talking about?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri’s mouth is distracting, and Jiyong has never wanted to own someone as bad as he wants to own Seungri. Completely.

“I almost thought you had changed,” Seungri says, standing up and brushing off the backs of the legs of his designer jeans. “You looked so sad, like there was an actual person who cared about other people underneath all of the fake smiles.”

“Silly you,” Jiyong mumbles.

“And I almost thought, over the past few weeks, that you weren’t going to treat me like a toy anymore. Like I had earned person-status in your head.”

“Stop talking about things you don’t understand,” Jiyong says, and he’s nauseous, so nauseous, because Jiyong still remembers the ‘no’s and he doesn’t want to hear them again. He doesn’t want Seungri to cringe away when Jiyong grabs his shoulder and neck and drags his head down.

Jiyong’s crazy, so crazy, and Seungri is too close.

“Make me understand, then.” Seungri steps nearer, back into Jiyong’s personal space, and Jiyong can’t bring himself to step back.

But Jiyong can always, always bring himself to be cruel, because Jiyong is an asshole and being cruel comes easy. “You’re just another person who cares about me when they know better,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri moves back like he’s been slapped. “Don’t you know it’s all a game?”

Seungri swallows, and looks down at the cement, fingering his wrist, where that tan line that always catches Jiyong's eye still lingers, and Jiyong’s heart shatters. “You’re right,” Seungri says. “I should know better.” Seungri digs in his pocket and finds his car keys. Seungri follows Jiyong's gaze to his wrist. "I tried to stop wearing the bracelet you gave me, but it's habit to put it on, when I'm tired, so the tan won't fade." Seungri laughs, and it's the bitterest sound Jiyong's ever heard him make. “And don’t worry,” Seungri says. “It’s taken ten years, but I finally, finally know better.”

Seungri unlocks his car and climbs in. He doesn’t look back, and Jiyong watches him drive off, wondering what, exactly, he’s done now.

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“I know it shouldn’t hurt,” Seungri says. “I know it shouldn’t, but it does anyway.”

“What?” Jiyong pulls his headphones off one ear.

“When you ignore me,” Seungri says. “I know it’s just the way you are, but it feels like I’m being punished for caring.”

“I’m not punishing you,” Jiyong says shortly, turning back to his laptop. Jiyong’s fingers tap lightly on the keys. His nails are bitten to the quick.

I’m punishing _myself,_ Jiyong thinks, as Seungri sighs, and starts to leave the room.

“If you don’t want me,” Seungri says, standing in the doorway. “You should let me go.”

“I’ll never let you go,” Jiyong whispers to the empty doorway, but Seungri is gone.

 

 

 

**PUSH**

 

 

“You’re sort of an idiot,” Seunghyun says into the phone. Jiyong almost hadn’t answered, because Sean and Yang Hyun Suk had just given him a blank schedule and asked him to pick songs for himself and for the band for the YG Family concert, and told him they expected it in the morning. Jiyong wonders if anyone else has such a strict deadline, or if this limit-pushing is part of Jiyong’s unspoken punishment. “I got maknae wasted because I’m nosy, and you, leader, are an idiot. Daesungie is patting his back right now as he sobs into cheap beer. He’s so sad he’s drinking _cheap beer_ , Jiyong. You know maknae doesn’t drink cheap beer.”

“Hyung,” Jiyong starts, but Seunghyun makes a weird noise in the back of his throat.

“All you have to do is be honest,” Seunghyun says.

“That’s very difficult for me to do outside of music.”

“Try harder.”

 

 

 

**QUESTION WHETHER CHANCE OR FATE WILL EVER SHOW A SIGN**

 

 

”Go bother Seungri instead of me,” Chaerin says, when Jiyong calls her.

“Maknae is mad at me,” Jiyong says to Chaerin, and Chaerin snorts. “Anyway, I’m calling to ask you about doing ‘The Leaders’ for the Family Tour, and…”

“Mad at you again?” Chaerin asks, still polite but a little incredulous, and Jiyong wishes he hadn’t said anything. “You guys seriously _just_ made up over your last secret fight two months ago, right?” Chaerin coughs. “What did you do?”

Jiyong doesn’t mean to answer, but he’s been bubbling lately, and he can’t seem to keep anything to himself. Chaerin doesn’t speak like she expects him to answer, but Jiyong finds himself doing so anyway.

“I got too greedy,” Jiyong says quietly. “I… He told me he was tired of games. That he’d finally learned his lesson about what kind of person I am.” Jiyong’s kind of embarrassed by the way his voice shakes.

“Oppa, are you okay?” Chaerin asks, suddenly sounding more interested in the conversation. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound so… well, sad.”

“It’s just… maknae is… he’s…”

“Well, he’s always been special to you,” Chaerin says. “We all knew that.”

“Except for him, apparently.”

“He was too busy thinking about how special _you_ were to him, probably, to see the evident facts,” Chaerin says. “Trust me, I’ve got valuable insight.”

“It sounded like you were about to say I should trust you because you’ve got 'woman's intuition' or something.”

“No, you should trust me because I have eyes, and because I’m not all caught up in your head like you are.”

“No one but me is caught up in my head,” Jiyong says. “It’s _my_ head.”

“You’re always so busy worrying about your own problems, and trying to keep them to yourself, that sometimes you miss the obvious,” Chaerin says.

“You sound like Youngbae.”

“Youngbae’s known you for a long time. You should listen to him.”

“I listen to him more than I listen to almost anyone else.”

“So anyway,” Chaerin says. “This is long distance, and I want to know what else Seungri said.”

“I should probably talk to you about the Family Tour instead-“

“Okay, we’ll do the song, we’ll make it work, and yes, making a remix is a good idea, because it’ll sound new to fans that have come to previous shows.”

“You’re starting to get to know me too well, too.”

“You’re such a control freak that it’s kind of predictable. Story, please.”

“He told me… he didn’t want to be a toy.” Jiyong studies the leopard-print of his sweatpants, letting his nails trace the outlines of the spots because he’s at a loss for what to do with his hands. His cell phone is cradled between his shoulder and his ear as he leans against the wall of the studio. “I don’t…”

“What is he to you, if he’s not a toy?” She asks, and Jiyong swallows. The silence is expensive, because Chaerin is in Japan, working on fine-tuning songs for her US album with some big American producer, and overseeing a new Japanese 2NE1 single with Teddy. “You always used to play with him when you felt like it, and snapped at him and made him go away when you didn’t. It’s always been like that. I’m not remotely surprised that-” Chaerin seems to catch herself. “I said too much. You’ve never really cared about water-cooler talk.”

“Not really,” Jiyong says. “But that’s not… I only pushed Seungri away when he got too close because I…” Jiyong gulps. It’s like there isn’t enough air, and he keeps seeing Seungri’s frustrated, angry face, and Jiyong wishes he were better at all this. It’s like he can only say the right thing to strangers, and only when it doesn’t really count. “It’s not like that,” Jiyong protests, and it’s like there’s something _alive_ in his gut, squirming around and clawing at the edges. “It’s not like that at all.”

“That’s what it looked like,” Chaerin says. “Like he was a pet.” She says it a little harshly, like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. The words cut at Jiyong, because he’s never thought about it that way before.

Jiyong only told Seungri to go away when he felt so on edge he might explode. When Seungri’s eyes were so bright that Jiyong couldn’t look away, and he’d wanted to make sure Seungri felt the same way about him. When he thought to himself _mine, mine, mine_ because Seungri was talking to someone else… That’s when Jiyong got scared, because he didn’t know what that meant in terms of everything else in his life that _should_ have mattered more. He didn’t know why he felt like that, about Seungri, and it unsettled him. Jiyong was not used to feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, because Jiyong has always known who he is and what he wants. Seungri made Jiyong feel so safe, but he also made Jiyong feel everything else more fiercely, too.

It seemed easier to back away. It seemed easier to ignore the phone calls and emails and quit cold turkey than to deal with all those emotions. Clinging to Seungri was an addiction Jiyong had needed to break, because Jiyong didn’t want to need Seungri; Jiyong just wanted Seungri to need him. But Seungri would call Jiyong back, every single time, and each time, Jiyong’s control became a little more threadbare.

But it’s been two years and one wife and hundreds of different ways things could have turned out since then, and behind Jiyong’s eyelids is still the boy Jiyong met when they were both teenagers, with his too-loud laugh and the dark circles under his eyes.

And Jiyong loves him.

“Ever since I was a trainee, I saw the way he looked at you. Seungri has always looked at you with stars in his eyes, oppa.” Chaerin hesitates, and Jiyong wonders what she’s not saying. “He still does, when you can’t see him. I saw him watching you at Se7en-oppa’s wedding. He looked like he wanted to walk over to you, but he was too scared. I asked him to dance just to distract him. I think it’s because he…” She stops. “So figure out what you really, truly want, and then do something about it, so you can both stop being so miserable.”

“How are you so smart?” Jiyong asks, and Chaerin laughs. “You’re only twenty-six.”

“And you’re twenty-eight going on fifteen, damn.” Chaerin laughs. “Don’t you know I’m the baddest female?” Jiyong can imagine her tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder and buffing her nails on her leather jacket. “It’s my job to be good at everything.”

“Don’t think you can be me,” Jiyong jokes. “I’m the one who’s good at everything.” Jiyong stares at his shoes now, and he feels nervous, like he hasn’t in years, because he’s an adult now, and he’s G-Dragon, and dragons aren’t supposed to be scared of anything.

“Except feelings,” Chaerin says. “I’m not saying I’m the best at it, but… It’s so strange to me how you can feel _so much_ and have no idea what to do with it all. But I guess I have faith you’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks, _I guess_ ,” Jiyong says, imitating her. “This call is costing a fortune.”

“Less than one of your hair extensions, probably,” Chaerin says. “But I’m about to go into make-up for a performance, so I have to go. But oppa,” and her voice is serious. “What do you want from Seungri? Not what you’re supposed to want, but what do you _really_ want?”

“Thanks,” Jiyong says again, and Chaerin laughs.

“So how did I do? Did I say something good?”

“Yeah,” Jiyong says. “I think you did.”

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

The first time Jiyong realizes he’s in love with Seungri, more than he’s ever been in love with anyone else, Jiyong is paralyzed with fear.

Jiyong will always put music first, but Seungri is the sweetest song Jiyong knows.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Jiyong means to call Seungri, or to go see him, but Seungri calls him first. “Hello?”

There’s no answer, just Seungri’s ragged breaths.

“Maknae?” Jiyong asks, softer than he usually speaks.

“I’m so afraid to feel about you the way I used to.” Seungri releases a soft, painful sigh. “Like I want to let you do anything you want to me. Like I’ll never be free of you.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you’ll do.”

“Can’t I just like you?”

“You don’t know how to do that, do you?”

“I don’t know if I do or not.”

“Then how am I supposed to be friends with you?” Seungri might be crying. His breath is coming so fast. Jiyong’s breath feels like it’s trying to catch up. It sounds like static between them.

“Don’t go away,” Jiyong says, before he can stop it, and he wishes he could take it back, but he can’t. Jiyong’s been taking that back for as long as he remembers, because he doesn’t want to be weak. “You’re mine.”

“I’m no one’s,” Seungri says. “I’m my own person.” Seungri pauses. “But sometimes, when you look at me, I forget that.”

“I just want to keep you,” Jiyong admits, and Seungri ‘s breath hitches. “Keep you and make sure no one but me can ever look at you. But I can’t do that. I know I can’t do that.”

“But why do you… It’s like you can’t even _stand_ me sometimes, and then other times, you’re… I don’t know what to think except it’s fun to you, to watch me fall apart.”

“I’m not good… at being honest with you,” Jiyong says. “But I’ve realized I need to try.” Jiyong licks his lips. “I’m really going to try. Because I can’t let you go. So let me…”

“Okay,” Seungri says. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

 

 

 

 

**PAUSE**

 

 

 

_”Seungri, are you listening? I love you.”_

 

 

 

 

**PLAY**

 

 

 

Jiyong plays so many games because then the stakes matter less. Jiyong plays games because he likes to be in control. Jiyong likes knowing that it’s he who decides when to roll the dice, and Jiyong likes knowing that whatever happens, at least it was only a game.

But Jiyong hates to lose, and Seungri is victory, so Jiyong is going to hold on to him with everything he has. Seungri has never really been a game, anyway; Seungri is the point of all the games, and Jiyong will never let him go.

Jiyong takes his wedding ring off, and sets it on the kitchen counter, and doesn’t miss the weight of it at all.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Seungri shows up in forty-five minutes, and Jiyong opens the door and doesn’t invite him in.

Jiyong hasn’t put on a shirt, and his hair is damp from the shower, and he’d meant to look more put together to make up for how he feels inside but he just hadn’t managed it.

Seungri walks in anyway, slipping off his shoes and sitting down on Jiyong’s sofa, shoulders hunched like he’s gearing up for an interview where he’s not allowed to laugh.

His button-up plaid shirt has a hole in the collar, and it’s well-worn and faded. It looks soft to the touch.

Jiyong gave it to him, a few years ago. Maybe five, or maybe six. Jiyong had sent it in the mail from Japan, and Seungri had sent him a thank you note written in Japanese just to tease him. Jiyong still has the note, even though he can't read it. It’s with Kiko’s locket, and a bunch of other things that tell a happy story Jiyong wishes were the truth.

“Why?” Seungri asks, when Jiyong sits next to him and curls up, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“Because you couldn’t possibly want what I have to offer as an explanation,” Jiyong says, and Seungri chuckles humorlessly.

“Anything is better than nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” Jiyong says.

“Let me be the judge of that,” Seungri says. “For once, let me have all the information, instead of just the scraps.”

Jiyong exhales, through his nose, and it makes an unattractive whistling sound. “Okay,” he says. “What is love, to you?”

“What kind of question is that?” Seungri asks. “There are so many different answers.”

“But you know what I mean,” Jiyong says lowly, and Seungri picks at the hem of his shirt.

“Love is…” Seungri sighs, and Jiyong wonders if Seungri is going to cry. There’s the waver in his voice that Jiyong recognizes. It shakes Jiyong’s heart. “Love is giving up control. In a way, it’s like being free, right?”

Jiyong bites his lip, and looks up at Seungri. His hair is sticking up on the sides, because he’d clearly hopped straight out of bed to come over to Jiyong’s big lonely house without thinking about it. Seungri is vain enough that it means something, that Jiyong’s answers are important to Seungri.

Jiyong wishes he would stay.

“That’s not what love is for me,” Jiyong says. Jiyong tightens his hands into fists, and looks into Seungri’s eyes.

“What is love, for you?” Seungri asks. “Is it someone who’ll do whatever you say and not give a fuck how you treat them? Is it someone who likes everything about you, even when you’re the world’s biggest asshole? Is it a weakness for people who are less ‘professional’ than you are?”

“No,” Jiyong says, and _oh_ , his chest is burning, blazing, and Jiyong is falling apart like the ash at the end of a cigarette. “Love is wanting to keep someone’s laugh in a jar so no one else can hear it. Love is needing someone so much that it’s like a drug, one that is slowly poisoning you.” Jiyong shifts closer, slowly, so that Seungri can move away if he wants. He doesn’t move, though, and instead keeps looking Jiyong in the eyes, eyebrows furrowed like he’s preparing for battle.

“Love is not wanting to hear a person’s voice because you like it so much. Love is pretending you don’t care, so it hurts less when they inevitably want to leave. Love is waking up in the middle of the night and staring down at the perfect shape of someone’s nose, and knowing that he doesn’t belong to you rips you apart inside until you can’t take it anymore.” Jiyong exhales, and new breath won’t come. There’s not enough air.

“Hyung,” Seungri says, and Jiyong doesn’t let him look away.

“Love is getting married to someone you _like_ , because you can’t have the person you’ve always _loved_ , because they don’t want you. It’s thinking that _that_ will help you forget, and then realizing that you’ll never be able to forget, because you’ll never feel that way about anyone else again.” A deep breath, and Jiyong is drowning, but he can’t suffocate yet, because he hasn’t said it all. “Love is pretending it’s a game so the other person won’t know you’re playing with your chips all-in, and if you lose, you’ll have lost everything.”

Seungri looks… Jiyong doesn’t know what that look means, but Seungri doesn’t look afraid. He doesn’t look angry, and Jiyong’s not quite sure, but he thinks that light in his eyes might be aching, painful hope. His eyes are wet, though, and now he’s definitely crying.

Jiyong doesn’t want Seungri to leave, even if he has to show him all his cards.

“Are you saying-“ Seungri starts, but Jiyong doesn’t let him finish.

Jiyong kisses him. Jiyong just reaches up and grabs Seungri’s face with both hands and drags him forward, pressing their mouths together, and Seungri opens to him with a choked sob, tentatively resting his hands on Jiyong’s shoulders and tilting to the right to allow Jiyong to move in closer. Jiyong eases Seungri’s lips apart with tiny licks at his lower lip, and Seungri shudders, and Jiyong can feel Seungri’s stubble beneath his palms, and the trembling of Seungri’s hands against his bare skin, and it’s simultaneously too much and not enough.

“Love is wanting to lock you away so I never have to share you, and knowing I can’t.”

Jiyong feels like the world is suddenly spinning backwards on its axis, and he loves it, just like he’s always loved taking risks and the adrenaline rush that accompanies it, and Jiyong wants to move in closer, move faster, and fall into Seungri until you can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins.

“Love is wanting to carve my name into you so no one will ever think you don’t belong to me.” He whispers it, but he knows Seungri hears him, because Seungri reacts.

Seungri is shaking, even as Jiyong slips his tongue into Seungri’s mouth to taste him, mapping the insides of his cheeks and the backs of his teeth and the roof off his mouth, marveling at how it feels, suddenly, that the little fractured pieces missing from Jiyong’s heart seem to be found here, in this moment, Seungri soft and pliant against his lips.

“Love is Lee Seunghyun. Lee Seungri.”

And then Seungri is kissing him back, and the Earth moves beneath Jiyong’s feet, and Seungri’s tongue is as quick and clever as he is, tangling with Jiyong’s as his fingers tighten on Jiyong’s shoulders, nails digging into the skin in a way that Jiyong likes more than it hurts. Jiyong thinks Seungri breaks the skin, and he hisses his appreciation into Seungri’s mouth, and Seungri gives this tiny, mewling noise that makes Jiyong release the other man’s face to find purchase in his hair, and he pulls away to lick along the perfect bow of Seungri’s upper lip before he sucks it into his mouth, biting down a little too hard, but not hard enough that Seungri will pull away.

And Seungri _lets_ him, and Seungri’s hands slide down Jiyong’s bare chest, and the way his palms skate across Jiyong’s tattoos, and rub Jiyong’s nipples, sends little jolts of electricity straight to Jiyong’s cock, and he can feel himself hardening in his jeans. Jiyong presses closer, throwing one of his legs over Seungri’s lap to straddle him, and _yes_ , just like that, his chest is rubbing against Seungri’s still clothed one, and now Seungri is beneath him, and Jiyong can delve deeper, tasting all that he can taste and reveling in how soft and silky Seungri’s mouth is.

Jiyong’s been living in the dark for years and years, and now, suddenly, there’s light, and Jiyong never wants this to end: he never wants to stop feeling Seungri unravel beneath him with tiny gasps that go straight to Jiyong’s dick, and almost inaudible cries that make Jiyong want to tear Seungri apart piece by piece just so he can keep on hearing them. Seungri is deliciously wanton beneath him, writhing and wriggling between Jiyong’s thighs as he lifts his hips for friction, and Jiyong loves _loves_ **loves** the way Seungri’s hands have found his waist, thick fingers leaving bruises in the skin as he tries to hold himself together.

Jiyong loves the way Seungri’s falling apart though, unshaven skin rubbing Jiyong’s skin raw, lips tirelessly clamoring for more contact, leaving wet and sloppy trails of saliva in his wake as he blindly kisses anything he can reach as Jiyong kisses Seungri’s nose and cheeks and chin, tasting Seungri’s salty skin, and the remnants of Seungri’s tears.

“Maknae,” Jiyong whispers, and presses an open mouth to Seungri’s neck. He can feel Seungri’s blood singing beneath his lips, and he bites down, and Seungri pulls away even as his hips jolt up, and he’s hard too, and Jiyong is so fucking stupid, because this, right here, right now, is what Jiyong’s wanted, needed, all along, but hadn’t been able to admit aloud. “Maknae.” It’s like a prayer on his lips as he says it over and over, a Buddhist chant, but Jiyong’s dreams have been answered, in the form of Seungri’s quick, shallow breaths and needy whines, and Jiyong sucks hard enough to mark him. Hard enough to claim him; the way Jiyong has always wanted, but has never been able to explain.

His hands trail down to the buttons of Seungri’s shirt, and Jiyong’s hands fumble with them, the high of the moment making it hard for him to keep still long enough to undo them. Seungri’s hands come up and grab Jiyong’s, closing around them, and Jiyong looks up, and Seungri’s eyes pin him in place.

And Seungri isn’t a boy anymore. Seungri isn’t the seventeen year old who looked at Jiyong like Jiyong has never done wrong, and Seungri isn’t the twenty-six year old man who’d looked at Jiyong like he was angry and afraid, only a few weeks ago. The man who looks back at Jiyong is both of those people, and also a man who is surrendering to Jiyong, in a way that awes Jiyong as much as it thrills him. And it’s alright, Jiyong thinks, that Seungri has changed and grown up, because there’s still, inside of Seungri, everything Jiyong loves, and maybe it’s better that Seungri can push and pull now, too.

Maybe it’s better that Jiyong will let him, now.

But Seungri is still Seungri, still looking for Jiyong’s approval as he pushes Jiyong’s hands away, and Jiyong smiles at him softly, letting his lips curl up on one side. They feel tight, and a little sticky, and they tingle, even now, making Jiyong yearn to take Seungri’s mouth one more time, or a hundred more times, or a thousand more times, even if it means he would have to stop watching the flush that slowly steals its way across Seungri’s cheeks and down his neck.

But Seungri doesn’t let go of Jiyong’s gaze, holding it even as he undoes his own shirt, Jiyong’s hands opting to explore the planes of Seungri’s face instead, even when a stripe of pale flesh slowly appears as Seungri’s hands make their way down.

“Hyung,” Seungri says seriously, and finally, Seungri starts blinking, that obnoxious way he does when he’s trying to find the right words, and he has no idea what they are. Finally, Jiyong finds enough control rest his thumbs under Seungri’s eyes, gently rubbing where the flesh there is darker. “This isn’t a game for me. I don’t think…” Seungri winces. “Don’t shut the door on me, now.”

Jiyong swallows, and closes his eyes for a moment. Behind his lids, there’s Seungri, laughing; Seungri, dancing; Seungri, arms wrapped around Jiyong’s waist and looking up at him like he has all the answers; Seungri, who is so completely irreplaceable that Jiyong’s been walking around for the past few years without his heart. Seungri, who is his, whether he knows it or not.

Jiyong will never be able to let his butterfly free, and that knowledge chills him at the same time as it makes him soar.

“It’s not a game for me, either,” Jiyong says, and it’s too gruff, and it doesn’t sound romantic, or like Jiyong’s feelings are threatening to leak out of his ears and nose and mouth and anywhere else they might find to escape. Seungri seems to know what Jiyong means, because his lips part slightly in surprise, and his eyes get a bit glassy again, and one of his hands comes to rest on Jiyong’s wrist, hanging there heavy like the bracelets they both used to wear. “I can’t let you go.”

Seungri licks his lips, and Jiyong can’t resist the invitation, diving forward and grabbing at Seungri’s shirt for balance. Seungri welcomes him with a soft sigh, and maybe Jiyong’s finally found home.

“You’re…” Seungri manages, between kisses, but Jiyong nibbles lightly on Seungri’s lower lip, and Seungri abandons speech, opting instead to lap at Jiyong’s mouth, eager, puppy-like, and Jiyong smiles, smiles, smiles, because that’s what he wants too.

“Stop telling me ‘no’,” Jiyong says, and it rumbles, and Seungri’s fingers tighten. “Tell me ‘yes’.”

“Yes,” Seungri says, and it’s a sob, and Jiyong hears in it everything he’s felt for the past three years, or the past ten years, or who the fuck knows how long, because everything is Seungri, and Seungri is his.

Jiyong’s never been able to let Seungri go. “You’re mine,” Jiyong says, and he leaves his teeth marks everywhere he whispers, and Seungri squirms and whimpers delightfully beneath him. Jiyong feels wild, and out of control, but Seungri is his, and it’s worth it.

“Yes,” Seungri says again, and Jiyong, who plays with words for a living, has never heard a word more beautiful. “Yes, yes, yes.”

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Seungri looks like something out of Jiyong’s dreams spread out on Jyong’s bed, riding Jiyong’s three fingers as Jiyong watches him from above. His entire body is flushed, but he’s not embarrassed. Instead he just looks disbelieving, looking up at Jiyong through a half-lidded gaze, hands fisted in Jiyong’s sheets and mouth parted as Jiyong stretches him slow.

“More,” Seungri whimpers, and Jiyong licks dry lips and ignores the way his balls ache.

“Slow,” Jiyong says. “Slow, slow.” Seungri is so tight around his fingers, and his hips, canting up to press Jiyong’s fingers deeper into him, seem so needy, and desperate, and Jiyong knows the feeling; he feels it himself.

“I know how much I can take,” Seungri says. “ _More_.”

And Jiyong frees his fingers from inside of Seungri, after crooking his fingers one more time into that spot that makes Seungri moan, voice cracking along the sound like it’s been wrenched from him, and he misses that heat, and the strength of Seungri shaking around him.

Jiyong slicks himself with hands that are barely steady enough, pouring too much oil into his palms; so much that in runs in tiny rivulets down his wrist and arm, and Seungri laughs, and catches some with his thumb, and Jiyong laughs too.

Then Jiyong puts his hands on Seungri’s hips and pulls him a little forward on the bed, pulling his thighs apart and up, and Seungri closes his eyes as Jiyong presses his tip to Seungri’s entrance.

Jiyong means to go slow, but Seungri is impatient, hips jerking up, closer, as If trying to force Jiyong inside of him, and Jiyong’s control, like it always does with Seungri, shudders and breaks, and he slips smoothly inside.

It’s too hot, and too tight, and Jiyong’s losing his mind, lost his mind, and his fingers are probably leaving bruises on Seungri’s thighs, they’re gripping so hard.

Jiyong’s in so deep Seungri is breathing for him, legs wrapped around Jiyong’s hips and mouth open wide as he gulps enough air for the both of them. Jiyong feels like maybe he’s breaking, or coming together, but it’s _them_ coming together, and Seungri’s hands grapple for purchase on Jiyong’s sweat-slicked back, and his perfectly filed nails scrape at Jiyong’s skin, and Jiyong tries to hold still; tries to give Seungri a chance to adjust to Jiyong’s intrusion, but Seungri’s having none of it.

“Fuck,” Jiyong says, and Seungri nods fervently, and Jiyong laughs again, as Seungri’s legs lock around his hips.

“Yes, that please,” Seungri pants, and Jiyong slides all the way out, before thrusting back in, hard enough to shake the bed, and Seungri is loud, so loud, but it’s a good kind of noise, the kind that makes Jiyong want to write songs about the way Seungri writhes and pleads for Jiyong to move “faster, harder”.

When Jiyong comes, Seungri is gazing up at him as if… Jiyong feels exactly like he felt the first time he saw Seungri, _like he’s been waiting his whole life to have someone look at him just like this._

Later, as Seungri drifts in and out of sleep, aligned as close to Jiyong as he can manage, legs intertwined, and chest half on top of Jiyong’s chest, arms holding too tight across Jiyong’s waist, Jiyong presses a soft kiss to Seungri’s forehead and thinks about the future.

“I love you,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri shifts, pressing his nose into the curve of Jiyong’s neck.

“How much is _that_  going to cost me?” Seungri asks, words muffled by Jiyong’s skin.

“You’ll have to be mine forever, probably,” Jiyong says.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Seungri says. “But I suppose that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

Jiyong drops the locket into the envelope, along with the stamped and notarized divorce papers and a tiny note.

`Thanks for the loan, but I don’t need it anymore.` the note says. He signs it _Kwon Jiyong_ , and adds a postscript at the bottom. ` I found my happiness, too.`

He seals it, and sends it via insured mail, and when he leaves the post office, he feels light.

 

 

 

**PULL**

 

 

 

Youngbae laughs as he pushes the cake into Seungri’s face, coating the younger man in spongey dessert, icing, and pieces of fruit as Seungri sputters.

The cake, only moments before, had said ‘Congratulations’, and it had been left for them by Yang Hyun Suk to congratulate them on their first Mutizen for this comeback. The dancers had clapped, and Seungri had made an ill-advised comment about the cake going straight to Youngbae’s hips, and Youngbae had gotten his revenge.

Now the cake is nothing but a memory, but the dancers seem pleased enough, and Daesung is picking up handfuls of it and wiping it in Seungri’s hair as Seungri tries to escape.

“Well, I don’t see any daggers sticking out of Youngbae’s back, yet,” Seunghyun says. “Maybe I overestimated your creepy.”

“No,” Jiyong says, but then Seungri looks up and smiles at Jiyong, eyes glimmering with adrenaline and mirth, and Jiyong’s heart beats a rhythm of _mine, mine, mine_ that’s so comforting and familiar that Jiyong misses it when it’s gone. “But I don’t have anything to be jealous of.”

“Oh no,” Seunghyun says. “Does this mean all our songs now are going to be about middle aged dogs and cuddling?”

“I don’t know,” Jiyong says, already starting to walk toward the other three, planning on joining the mischief. Seungri looks delicious, and he can't wait. He pauses, and looks over his shoulder playfully. “I guess we’ll find out.”

 

 

 

 

**END**


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